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101 " That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. "
― Edith Wharton , The House of Mirth
102 " Jack Stepney had once said of Miss Van Osburgh that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust. "
103 " [The world] is not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to fight it on its own terms - and above all, my dear, not alone! "
104 " she likes being good, and I like being happy. "
105 " he had always enjoyed Lily Bart; and his course lay so far out of her orbit that it amused him to be drawn for a moment into the sudden intimacy which her proposal implied. "
106 " The provocation in her eyes increased his amusement—he had not supposed she would waste her powder on such small game; but perhaps she was only keeping her hand in; or perhaps a girl of her type had no conversation but of the personal kind. At any rate, she was amazingly pretty, and he had asked her to tea and must live up to his obligations. "
107 " He saw that all the conditions of life had conspired to keep them apart; since his very detachment from the external influences which swayed her had increased his spiritual fastidiousness, and made it more difficult for him to live and love uncritically. "
108 " Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of poverty. "
109 " Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath. "
110 " they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. "
111 " It was difficult to define her beyond saying that she seemed to exist only as a hostess, not so much from any exaggerated instinct of hospitality as because she could not sustain life except in a crowd. "
112 " Every drop of blood in Lily's veins invited her to happiness. "
113 " [...] the people who find fault with society are too apt to regard it as an end and not a means, just as the people who despise money speak as if its only use were to be kept in bags and gloated over? Isn't it fairer to look at them both as opportunities, which may be used either stupidly or intelligently, according to the capacity of the user? "
114 " the same quality of making other standards non-existent by ignoring them. This attribute was common to most of Lily's set: they had a force of negation which eliminated everything beyond their own range of perception. "
115 " All the exquisite influences of the hour trembled in their veins, and drew them to each other as the loosened leaves were drawn to the earth. "
116 " But he would see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to safety. "
117 " no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the anaconda. "
118 " you?"—his words overwhelmed him with a realization of the cowardice which had driven him from her at the very moment of attainment. Yes—he had always feared his fate, and he was too honest to disown his cowardice now; "
119 " In the long moment before the curtain fell, he had time to feel the whole tragedy of her life. It was as though her beauty, thus detached from all that cheapened and vulgarized it, had held out suppliant hands to him from the world in which he and she had once met for a moment, and where he felt an over-mastering longing to be with her again. "
120 " It is only because I am tired and have such odious things to think about,” she kept repeating; and it seemed an added injustice that petty cares should leave a trace on the beauty which was her only defence against them. But "