“There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry - architecture being the least banal derivative of the latter.”

“There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.”

“To read is not a virtue; but to read well is an art, and an art that only the born reader can acquire. The gift of reading is no exception to the rule that all natural gifts need to be cultivated by practice and discipline; but unless the innate aptitude exist the training will be wasted. It is the delusion of the mechanical reader to think that intentions may take the place of aptitude.”

“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.”

“But there was about her the mysterious authority of beauty, a sureness in the carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without being in the least theatrical, struck him as highly trained and full of a conscious power." (Newland Archer of Countess Olenska)”

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

“Why must a girl pay so dearly for her least escape," Lily muses as she contemplates the prospect of being bored all afternoon by Percy Grice, dull but undeniably rich, "on the bare chance that he might ultimately do her the honor of boring her for life?”