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

Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an aura over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which wellnigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze.

Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.

That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!

You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all.

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

...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.