Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one

I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.

...the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honored, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.