Paragon Walk

How little one guessed of people when one saw them only in the single dimension of a few days or weeks; how they lacked all the substance of the past. They seemed almost flat, like cardboard, with all the depth gone.

The success of the lie depends a great deal upon how much the hearer wishes to believe it,” she replied.

Without the discipline of work, they had invented the discipline of etiquette, and it had become just as ruthless a master.

Death from hunger happened a hundred yards from death from obesity.

Trouble is, he wasn’t clever enough to pretend to be a little less clever.

Death was pain and sickness, and terror of the long, blind, last step.

Success without envy was like snails without sauce—and, as any cultivated woman knew, the sauce is everything!

He was far too smooth, too wry and subtle to be from the great wind-and-snow-driven plains of Canada.

I believe beauty is not so much a matter of what your features or your coloring may be, but the way you behave and what you believe of yourself.

The essence of strength is not in overpowering others, but in mastering oneself.

One pretends nothing can be done; therefore, one can do nothing and feel perfectly justified. I think it is only another kind of dishonesty,

Charlotte felt a pity for her, because her world was changing, and she did not understand it; it had no place for her. She was like one of Mr. Darwin’s dinosaurs, dangerous and ridiculous, beyond its time.