Lack of genius never held anyone back. Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that.

So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly helpfulness she could into her next question. “Excuse me, but are you the bad company young Mr. Scott has got into?

I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.

It seems to me,’ said Philippa prosaically, ‘that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford’s protection than without it.

To the men exposed to his rule Lymond never appeared ill: he was never tired; he was never worried, or pained, or disappointed, or passionately angry. If he rested, he did so alone; if he slept, he took good care to sleep apart. “—I sometimes doubt if he’s human,” said Will, speaking his thought aloud. “It’s probably all done with wheels.

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.

Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.