“You will admit that if it was not life it was magnificent.”

“If we could only learn to look on evil as evil, whether it's clothed in filth or monotony or magnificence.”

“No," interrupted Marcia emphatically. "And you're a sweet boy. Come here and kiss me."Horace stopped quickly in front of her."Why do you want me to kiss you?" he asked intently. "Do you just go round kissing people?""Why, yes," admitted Marcia, unruffled. "'At's all life is. Just going around kissing people.”

“He did not understand all he had heard, but from his clandestine glimpse into the privacy of these two, with all the world that his short experience could conceive of at their feet, he had gathered that life for everybody was a struggle, sometimes magnificent from a distance, but always difficult and surprisingly simple and a little sad.”

“But I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.”

“If you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.”

“You will feel your own reflection sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.”