“My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet.”

“For she was really too lovely--too formidably lovely. I was used by now to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished--and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who need not fear crow's-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and chatted? but then no young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and enchantments...”

“There was once a little girl who was so very intelligent that her parents feared that she would die. But an aged aunt, who had crossed the Atlantic in a sailing-vessel, said, 'My dears, let her marry the first man she falls in love with, and she will make such a fool of herself that it will probably save her life.”

“I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.”

“It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.”

“And that nice little balcony is yours? How cool it looks up there!”

“She would not have put herself out so much to say so little.”