And yet to every bad there is a worse.

War makes good history but peace is poor reading.

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

Always wanting another man than your own.

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.

She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.

If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?