That's the whole burden of this novel - the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world that you don't care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.

Her beautiful eyes and lips were very grave as she made her choice, and Anthony thought again how naive was her every gesture; she took all the things of life for hers to choose from and apportion, as though she were continually picking out presents for herself from an inexhaustible counter.

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

You don’t know what a trial it is to be —like me. I've got to keep my face like steel in the street to keep men from winking at me.

Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed, at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.

Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.