You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue - to be sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud - a missile that should never have reached you - and down you drop to the ground.

An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.

Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.

To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?

Though it might have its momentary alarms, paternity is not an exciting vocation.

She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offense.

She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.