Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.

There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.

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

When yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hairlike lines.

Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain. She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself.

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.