She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

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!

Some folk want their luck buttered.

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

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.

She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises.