Sister Carrie - Theodore Dreiser

The Spendings of Fancy — Facts Answer with Sneers.

To the untravelled, territory other than their own familiar heath is invariably fascinating. Next to love, it is the one thing which solaces and delights. Things new are too important to be neglected, and mind, which is a mere reflection of sensory impressions, succumbs to the flood of objects. Thus lovers are forgotten, sorrows laid aside, death hidden from view. There is a world of accumulated feeling back of the trite dramatic expression — “I am going away.”

Sunday passed with equal doubts, worries, assurances, and heaven knows what vagaries of mind and spirit.

The road downward has but few landings and level places.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.

His black eyes lit with a warmth which half displaced the cold make-believe that usually dwelt in them.

She knew what it was to meet with people who were indifferent, to walk alone amid so many who cared absolutely nothing about you. Had not she? Was not she at this very moment quite alone? Who was there among all whom she knew to whom she could appeal for sympathy? Not one. She was left to herself to brood and wonder.

Little things brought out on such occasions need great love to obliterate them afterward.

Only the ashes of all her fine fancies were remaining — ashes still concealing, nevertheless, a few red embers of hope.

He felt as if the world were not quite so bad with such a good man in it.

A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o’-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairylands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

It does not take money long to make plain its impotence, providing the desires are in the realm of affection.

It lessens a woman’s opinion of a man when she learns that his admiration is so pointedly and generously distributed. She sees but one object of supreme compliment in this world, and that is herself. If a man is to succeed with many women, he must be all in all to each.

One of her order of mind would have been content to be cast away upon a desert island with a bundle of money, and only the long strain of starvation would have taught her that in some cases it could have no value.

The world is full of desirable situations, but, unfortunately, we can occupy but one at a time. It doesn’t do us any good to wring our hands over the far-off things.

The longing to be shielded, bettered, sympathised with, is one of the attributes of the sex.