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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.
“Don’t you ever mind,” she asked suddenly, “not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”
Why could one never do a natural thing without having to screen it behind a structure of artifice?
Most timidities have such secret compensations, and Miss Bart was discerning enough to know that the inner vanity is generally in proportion to the outer self-depreciation.
Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.
the civilized instinct finds a subtler pleasure in making use of its antagonist than in confounding him.
The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.
To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness, a room may open almost human arms,
emphasized the ideals of a world where conspicuousness passed for distinction,
Where a woman is concerned, it’s the story that’s easiest to believe.
half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn’t any.
But the idealist subdued to vulgar necessities must employ vulgar minds to draw the inferences to which he cannot stoop;
It was a meagre enough life, on the grim edge of poverty, with scant margin for possibilities of sickness or mischance, but it had the frail audacious permanence of a bird’s nest built on the edge of a cliff—a mere wisp of leaves and straw, yet so put together that the lives entrusted to it may hang safely over the abyss.
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.
