Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?" "Yes." "All like ours?" "I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted." "Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?" "A blighted one.

It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness.

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

Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.

Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.