“Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity... Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives there was doubtless a real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.”

“And all the while, I suppose," he thought, "real people were living somewhere, and real things happening to them ...”

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

“Lily had no real intimacy with nature but she had a passion for the appropriate and could be keenly sensitive to a scene which was the fitting background of her own sensations.”

“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”

“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.”

“Well--there it was, and the fault was doubtless neither hers nor his, but that of the world they had grown up in, of their own moral contempt for it and physical dependence on it, of his half-talents and her half-principles, of the something in them both that was not stout enough to resist nor yet pliant enough to yield.”