Daisy Miller

by Henry James

"Common," she was, as Mrs. Costello had pronounced her; yet it was a wonder to Winterbourne that, with her commonness, she had a singularly delicate grace.

Miss Miller's observations were not remarkable for logical consistency; for anything she wanted to say she was sure to find a pretext.

She seemed to him, in all this, an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity.

Of course a man may know everyone. Men are welcome to the privilege!"

"Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians. They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life that is quite enough."

"You are like the infant Hannibal,"

American women—the pretty ones, and this gave a largeness to the axiom—were at once the most exacting in the world and the least endowed with a sense of indebtedness.

the young American, who said nothing, reflected upon that profundity of Italian cleverness which enables people to appear more gracious in proportion as they are more acutely disappointed.

Winterbourne felt a superior indignation at his own lovely fellow countrywoman's not knowing the difference between a spurious gentleman and a real one.

"I have offered you advice," Winterbourne rejoined. "I prefer weak tea!"

the unexpected in her behavior was the only thing to expect.

"That's their folly," said Mrs. Costello; "it's not their merit."

it was painful to hear so much that was pretty, and undefended, and natural assigned to a vulgar place among the categories of disorder.

He asked himself whether Daisy's defiance came from the consciousness of innocence, or from her being, essentially, a young person of the reckless class.

if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors.