Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self?

He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it, the rest of the world might seem less empty.

The only thing to do is to hug one's friends tight and do one's job.

To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

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

Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.