In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.

... there are spines to which the immobility of worship is not a strain.

I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.

But I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.