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.

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

A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.

- the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man.

Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.

She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.