Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision. That new, that personal, vision is attained only by looking long enough at the object represented to make it the writer's own; and the mind which would bring this secret gem to fruition must be able to nourish it with an accumulated wealth of knowledge and experience.

Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

Once more it was borne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been taught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.

[B]ut he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who loved ideas need hunger mentally.

The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.

It was amusement enough to be with a group of fearless and talkative girls, who said new things in a new language, who were ignorant of tradition and unimpressed by distinctions of rank; but it was soon clear that their young hostesses must be treated with the same respect, if not with the same ceremony as English girls of good family.