You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.

It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed.

Am I solemn? I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear." "You look as if you were taking me to a prayer-meeting or a funeral. If that's a grin your ears are very near together." "Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?" "Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It'll pay the expenses of our journey.

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

I don’t think I pity her. She doesn’t strike me as a girl that suggests compassion. I think I envy her... I don’t know whether she is a gifted being, but she is a clever girl, with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored...Very pretty indeed; but I don’t insist upon that. It’s her general air of being someone in particular that strikes me.