She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.

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.

...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.

War makes rattling good history.

Many...have learned that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.

I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.