Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has alway… - Edith Wharton

I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.

It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs.