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21 " She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate. "
― Edith Wharton , The House of Mirth
22 " Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any. "
23 " She was very near hating him now; yet the sound of his voice, the way the light fell on his thin, dark hair, the way he sat and moved and wore his clothes—she was conscious that even these trivial things were inwoven with her deepest life. "
24 " Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want? "
25 " It is so easy for a woman to become what the man she loves believes her to be "
26 " I was just a screw or cog in the great machine I called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was of no use anywhere else. "
27 " Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths? "
28 " He knelt by the bed and bent over her, draining their last moment to its lees; and in the silence there passed between them the word which made all clear. "
29 " There is someone I must say goodbye to. Oh, not you - we are sure to see each other again - but the Lily Bart you knew. I have kept her with me all this time, but now we are going to part, and I have brought her back to you - I am going to leave her here. When I go out presently she will not go with me. I shall like to think that she has stayed with you. "
30 " Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose. "
31 " She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her. "
32 " 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. "
33 " She had been bored all afternoon by Percy Gryce... but she could not ignore him on the morrow, she must follow up her success, must submit to more boredom, must be ready with fresh compliances and adaptibilities, and all on the bare chance that he might ultimately decide to do her the honour of boring her for life. "
34 " They belonged to that vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. "
35 " Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in. "
36 " No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity "
37 " One of the surprises of her unoccupied state was the discovery that time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace "
38 " Isn't it natural that I should belittle all the things I can't offer you? "
39 " It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now "
40 " He had a confused sense that she must have cost a great deal to make, that a great many dull and ugly people must, in some mysterious way, have been sacrificed to produce her. "