There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.

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

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.

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.

One can remain alive ... if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity interested in big things and happy in small ways.