The House of Mirth

She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.

Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.

She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate.

Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.

She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life.

As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.

Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else.

It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?

He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear.

There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you.

She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.

Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.

The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold back again into something else; and that's the secret that most of your friends have lost.

They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets.

She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life.

The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it." You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.

Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.

Don't they always go from bad to worse? There's no turning back--your old self rejects you, and shuts you out. ~Lilly Bart

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity

I have tried hard - but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds out that one only fits into one hole? One must go back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap - and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap!

It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now

He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her.

One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace

Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.

Little as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.

Most timidities have such secret compensations and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self depreciation.

Isn't it natural that I should belittle all the things I can't offer you?

A woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself