In every heart there should be one grief that is like a well in the desert.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.

What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

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

She wondered if, when human souls try to get too near each other, they do not inevitably become mere blurs to each other's vision.

It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.