If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied.

One cares so little for the style in which one's praises are written.

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.

... caprice is as ruinous as routine.

It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them.