Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.

Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?

Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?

But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.

They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.