Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.

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

I'd almost say it's the worries that make married folks sacred to each other.

And I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie.

People struggled on for years with 'troubles,' but they almost always succumbed to 'complications.

I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them - children, duties, visits, bores, relations - the things that protect married people from each other.

There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it.