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.

Life has a way of overgrowing its achievements as well as its ruins.

Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

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

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!

Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.

Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity... Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives there was doubtless a real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.