The social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies.

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

It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

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

Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.

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