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

The social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies.

A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.

But no one came. Because no one ever does.

But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.

There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness.

Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin.