A wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.

She wanted something to happen - something, anything: she did not know what.

She was moved by a kind of commiseration... a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.

one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul

There are periods of despondency and suffering which take possession of me. But I don't want anything but my own way. That is wanting a good deal, of course, when you have to trample upon the lives, the hearts, the prejudices of others-

A wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth.

It is greater than the stars - that moving procession of human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon.