The transition from libertine to prig was so complete.
He dispensed starlight to casual moths.
They had never been closer in their month of love, nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat’s shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.
What was it up there in the song that seemed to be calling her back inside? What would happen now in the dim, incalculable hours?
When I see a beautiful shell like that I can’t help feeling a regret about what’s inside it.
If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.
You know I’m old in some ways-in others-well, I’m just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-and I dread responsibility.
She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
She was beautiful – but especially she was without mercy.
A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She’s too pretty.
But you can love more than just one person, can’t you?
I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife.
We all must try to be good.
Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances.
I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.
So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight – watching over nothing.
But I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.
He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse.
Human sympathy has its limits, and we were contented to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.
And after reading Thoreau I felt how much I have lost by leaving nature out of my life.