“He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.”

“Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.”

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

“Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her--of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated--he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.”

“Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”

“It was the old New York way...the way people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes", except those who gave rise to them. ”

“There was money enough... but she asked so much of life, in ways so complex and immaterial. He thought of her as walking bare-footed through a stony waste. No one would understand her- no one would pity her- and he, who did both, was powerless to come to her aid.”