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81 " It was before him again in its completeness -- the choice in which she was content to rest: in the stupid costliness of the food and the showy dulness of the talk, in the freedom of speech which never arrived at wit and the freedom to act which never made for romance. The strident setting of the restaurant, in which their table seemed set apart in a special glare of publicity, and the presence at it of little Dabham of the "Riviera Notes," emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction, and the society column had become the roll of fame. "
― Edith Wharton , The House of Mirth
82 " She paused before him with a smile which seemed at once designed to admit him to her familiarity, and to remind him of the restrictions it imposed. "
83 " Mr. Gryce was like a merchant whose warehouses are crammed with an unmarketable commodity. "
84 " women never learn to dispense with the sentimental motive in their judgments of men. "
85 " Something in truth lay dead between them—the love she had killed in him and could no longer call to life. But something lived between them also, and leaped up in her like an imperishable flame: it was the love his love had kindled, the passion of her soul for his. "
86 " But he could never be long without trying to find a reason for what she was doing . . . "
87 " Though usually adroit enough where her own interests were concerned, she made the mistake, not uncommon to persons in whom the social habits are instinctive, of supposing that the inability to acquire them quickly implies a general dulness. Because a bluebottle bangs irrationally against a window-pane, the drawing-room naturalist may forget that under less artificial conditions it is capable of measuring distances and drawing conclusions with all the accuracy needful to its welfare... "
88 " But her course was too purely reasonable not to contain the germs of rebellion. "
89 " But there was something more miserable still—it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the heedless current of the years. "
90 " His light tone, in which, had her nerves been steadier, she would have recognized the mere effort to bridge over an awkward moment, jarred on her passionate desire to be understood. In her strange state of extra-lucidity, which gave her the sense of being already at the heart of the situation, it seemed incredible that any one should think it necessary to linger in the conventional outskirts of word-play and evasion. "
91 " But how could she trust herself to keep her footing? She knew the strength of the opposing impulses-she could feel the countless hands of habit dragging her back into some fresh compromise with fate. "
92 " Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life. "
93 " He had the kind of character in which prudence is a vice, and good advice the most dangerous nourishment. "
94 " Once—twice—you gave me the chance to escape from my life, and I refused it: refused it because I was a coward. Afterward I saw my mistake—I saw I could never be happy with what had contented me before. But it was too late: you had judged me—I understood. 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 have lived on—don't take it from me now! "
95 " The Wetheralls always went to church. They belonged to the vast group of human automata who go through life without neglecting to perform a single one of the gestures executed by the surrounding puppets. "
96 " Ah, he would take her beyond---beyond the ugliness, the pettiness, the attrition and corrosion of her soul. "
97 " To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that's what I call success. "
98 " The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is the truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her "
99 " She was like some rare flower grown for exhibition, a flower from which every bud had been nipped except the crowning blossom of her beauty. "
100 " And for always getting what she wants in the long run, commend me to a nasty woman. "