Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?

We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.

Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?

Bless thy simplicity, Tess

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.

...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.