Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving towards the watcher on the shore.

whatever the uses of a room, they are seriously interfered with if it be not preserved as a world by itself.

But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer

The visible world is a daily miracle for those who have eyes and ears; and I still warm hands thankfully at the old fire, though every year it is fed with the dry wood of more old memories.

People struggled on for years with 'troubles,' but they almost always succumbed to 'complications.

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.

She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.