There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.

...the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honored, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

The defective can be more than the entire.

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")

That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the center of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.