...he seemed to approach the grave as an hyperbolic curve approaches a line, less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.

Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road.

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you. -Gabriel Oak

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

That cold accretion called the world, so terrible in the mass, is so non formidable, even pitiable, in its units.