I heard someone say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl's life.

Why did dusk and fir-scent and the afterglow of autumnal sunsets make people say absurd things?

Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet - never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man. Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellignton or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid.

One can't get over the habit of being a little girl all at once.

…determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted.

I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself.

Outgrowing things we love is never a pleasant process.