If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession

...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.

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

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.

Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight.