you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.

Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

That aspects are within us; and who seems Most kingly is the King.