There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Your dunce who can't do his sums always has a taste for the infinite.

For character too is a process and an unfolding. . . among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful. . . .

Death was not to be a leap: it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.

The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.

But if Maggie had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.