War was a hellish, horrible hideous thing - too horrible and hideous to happen in the twentieth century between civilised nations.

In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of "faëry lands forlorn," where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Heart's Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up? Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.

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.

Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare... Perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways.

It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it.

That is one good thing about this world - there are always sure to be more springs.