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.

Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.

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.

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.

The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.