Keep making the movements of life.
She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.
She envied Ralph his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more — this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.
One doesn't defend one's god: one's god is in himself a defense.
The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.