Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

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

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky.

You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet!

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.