The helpless ecstasy of loosing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

It is difficult for young people to live things down. We will tolerate vice, grand larceny and the quieter forms of murder in our contemporaries... but our children's friends must show a blank service record.

Possibly it had occurred to him the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. [...] It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.

Many nights he lay there dreaming awake of secret cafés in Mont Marte, where ivory women delved in romantic mysteries with diplomats and soldiers of fortune, while orchestras played Hungarian waltzes and the air was thick and exotic with intrigue and moonlight and adventure.