Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.

The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.

The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?

If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.

Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her—doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there.

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.