Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?

there are lots of ways of answering a letter - and writing doesn't happen to be mine.

Beauty (was)a gift which, in the eyes of New York, justified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.

To have you here, you mean-in reach and yet out of reach? To meet you in this way, on the sly? It's the very reverse of what I want.