Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted at his friend that this had been only because of a reason. The reason, it now began to appear even to himself, was that he had never had a lady to smoke with.
I don’t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me I shall always be ashamed.
It was in seeing her that he felt what their interruption had been, and that they met across it even as persons whose adventures, on either side, in time and space, of the nature of perils and exiles, had had a peculiar strangeness. He wondered if he were as different for her as she herself had immediately appeared.
It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason.
I shall always think of you; I shall never think of anyone else. I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn’t stay at home after you had gone: I hated the country because you were not in it. If I like this country at present it is only because it holds you.
The English are the most romantic people in the world.
But my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that’s not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore.
He was gathering everything up, everything he should tell her.
I don’t go off easily, but when I’m touched, it’s for life. It’s for life, Miss Archer, it’s for life.
The past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours.
But I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I’m quite content to be myself; I don’t want to change.
I know how you suffer, and that’s why I’m here.
I can’t escape unhappiness.
She believed just then that to let him take her in his arms would be the next thing to her dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself sink and sink.
The stale September days, in the huge half-empty town, had a charm wrapped in them as a coloured gem might be wrapped in a dusty cloth.
Ah, be mine as I’m yours!
It would have been impossible to carry a bad name with a greater sweetness of innocence.
They had exchanged vows and tokens, sealed their rich compact, solemnized, so far as breathed words and murmured sounds and lighted eyes and clasped hands could do it, their agreement to belong only, and to belong tremendously, to each other.
I don’t care who you may be – I don’t want to know; it signifies very little to-day.
It’s very easy to laugh at her but it is not easy to be as brave as she.
She does everything beautifully. She’s complete.