Archer reddened to the temples but dared not move or speak: it was as if her words had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive off on startled wings, but that might gather a flock if it were left undisturbed.

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.

It seems stupid to have discovered America only to make it into a copy of another country.

I don't know that I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want some one who made it interesting.

She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.

Think what stupid things the people must have done with their money who say they're 'happier without'.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.