Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was.
Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
I always want to know the things one shouldn't do.So as to do them? asked her aunt.So as to choose. said Isabel
Everything had something behind it: life was like a long corridor with rows of closed doors.
A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can’t see--that’s my idea of happiness.
He had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.
The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
Who was she, what was she that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that she pretended to be larger than this large occasio...
Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.
Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.
It is enough to say that her perception of the endless interest of the place was such as might have been expected in a young woman of her intelligence and culture. She had always been fond of history,...
I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.
And the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.
There was something superior even in his injustice, and absolute in his mistakes.
Since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.
Obstacles are those frightening things you see when you take you eyes off your goal.
When it's for each other that people give things up theydon't miss them
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
The smash was their walk, their déjeuner, their omelette, the Chablis, the place, the view, their present talk and his present pleasure in it—to say nothing, wonder of wonders, of her own. To this tun...