The moment had come for her to tell her husband. By this single, cathartic act, she would, she believed, rid herself of the doubts and anxieties that beset her.

Congress-these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage.

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

A good deal of education consists of unlearning- the breaking of bad habits as with a tennis serve.

The famous Florentine elegance, which attracts tourists to the shops on Via Tornabuoni and Via della Vigna Nuova, is characterized by austerity of line, simplicity, economy of effect.

When she got a letter from him that had been dictated to his stenographer, she knew that his splurge was over.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

The mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved in a tornado.

The ideas he put forward, familiar enough when clothed in their usual phraseology, emerged in his writing in a state of undress that had them look exciting and almost new, just as a woman whom one has known for years is always something of a surprise without her clothes on.

Now and then, this look of commendation would rest particularly on you; whenever this happened, it was as if, in his delight, he had reached over and squeezed you.