I hate careless people. That’s why I like you.
Suddenly I wasn’t thinking of Daisy or Gatsby anymore, but of this clean, hard, limited person, who dealt in universal skepticism, and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm.
All the evil hate in the mad heart of February was wrought into the forlorn and icy wind that cut its way cruelly across Central Park and down along Fifth Avenue.
I’ve got a streak of what you’d call cheapness. I don’t know where I get it but it’s – oh, things like this and bright colors and gaudy vulgarity. I seem to belong here. These people could appreciate me and take me for granted, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I’m this because of this or that because of that.
I’ve never met a man who led a rotten life and didn’t have a weak will.
At a frantic command from some invisible source, Anthony groped his way inside.
You’re a rotten driver,” I protested. “Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn’t to drive at all.” “I am careful.” “No, you’re not.” “Well, other people are,” she said lightly. “What’s that got to do with it?” “They’ll keep out of my way,” she insisted. “It takes two to make an accident.
He held her hand and she gave him such a look that he whispered her name aloud.
He felt that he was leaving behind him his chance of being a certain type of artist. It seemed so much more important to be a certain sort of man.
I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.
The start and unexpected miracle of a night fades out with the lingering death of the last starts and the premature birth of the first newsboys. The flame retreats to some remote and platonic fire; the white heat has gone from the iron and the glow from the coal.
Resignedly and with difficulty Tom removed the cigar – that is, he removed part of it, and then blew the remainder with a whut sound across the room, where it landed liquidly and limply in Mrs. Ahearn’s lap.
They were uncertain, resentful, and somewhat ill at ease. This they hid by pretending an elaborate relief at being out of the army, and by assuring each other that military discipline should never again rule their stubborn, liberty-loving wills. Yet, as a matter of fact, they would have felt more at home in a prison than in this newfound and unquestionable freedom.
Even forty years ago we had good men in politics, but we, we are brought up to pile up a million and “show what we are made of.” Sometimes I wish I’d been an Englishman; American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy.
So many, such mingled emotions, that no one of them was separable from the others! She could have wept for her mother, who was crying quietly back there ten feet and for the loveliness of the June sunlight flooding in at the windows. She was beyond all conscious perceptions. Only a sense, colored with delirious wild excitement, that the ultimately important was happening – and a trust, fierce and passionate, burning in her like a prayer, that in a moment she would be forever and securely safe.
What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances... Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of circumstances.
The sky was low at night, full of the presence of a strange and watchful God.
She did not want him to be like other men, yet here were the same exigent demands, as if he wanted to take some of herself away, carry it off in his pocket.
His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age.
Too bad she was dull – dull girls were unbearable – certainly pretty though.