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.

Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.

“Yes, the Gorgon has dried your tears,” he said. “Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary — she fastens their eyelids open, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness.”

Everybody who does anything at all does too much.

When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say.

They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets.

Make ones center of life inside ones self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity.