...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.

But marriage is one long sacrifice.... Chapter 21, Medora Manson speaking to Newland Archer

I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.

I couldn't have spoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm looking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great flame. But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered, and what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now and then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit perfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my mind, just quietly trusting it to come true.

I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if it had grown out of me like wings.

Leisure, itself the creation of wealth, is incessantly engaged in transmuting wealth into beauty by secreting the surplus energy which flowers in great architecture, great painting and great literature. Only in the atmosphere thus engendered floats that impalpable dust of ideas which is the real culture. A colony of ants or bees will never create a Parthenon.

Inkstands and tea-cups are never as full as when one upsets them.