Yas

“He had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.”
― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”
― Jane Austen, Emma