Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.

You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all.

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

To have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won; and Eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was.

You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!

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.

The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.