He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.

It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be

Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.

Archer was too intelligent to think that a young woman like Ellen Olenska would necessarily recoil from everything that reminded her of her past. She might believe herself wholly in revolt against it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her even though it were against her will.

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be American before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?

A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.