There is rather in their faces a quiet , baffling , negative , and abnegative expression , which certainly is as far from happy content as it is from desperate rebellion

The smell of burnt flesh, which the perilla seeds couldn't wholly mask, pricked my nose.

Only this life with Clifford, this endless spinning of webs of yarn, of the minutiae of consciousness, these stories Sir Malcolm said there was nothing in, and they wouldn't last. Why should there be anything in them, why should they last? Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Sufficient unto the moment is the appearance of reality.

There is reason, it is said, in the roasting of eggs, and there is philosophy even in furniture—a philosophy nevertheless which seems to be more imperfectly understood by Americans than by any civilized nation upon the face of the earth.