Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.

My wicked heart will ramble on in spite of myself. (Arabella)

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

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?