The turnings of life seldon show a sign-post; or rather, though the sign is always there, it is usually placed some distance back, like the notices that give warning of a bad hill or a level railway-crossing.

The effect produced by a short story depends almost entirely on its form.

Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

“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.”

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.

One can remain alive ... if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity interested in big things and happy in small ways.