"I was counting the waves", replied Amory gravely, "I'm going in for statistics".

All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.

It isn't given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.

Americans, while occasionally willing to be serfs, have always been obstinate about being peasantry.

Well, I can't describe her exactly-except to say that she was beautiful. She was-tremendously alive.

France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter - it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

you once liked me, didn't you?, he asked. LIKED you- I LOVED you. Everybody loved you. You could've had anybody you wanted for the asking.