Tory’s deformities lay deep down from a woman’s vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.
Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is afterwards recalled to his mind’s eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special medium of manifestation throughout all the pages of his memory.
She saw nothing of Winterborne during he days of her recovery: and perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue than it could have done if he had stood before her with all the specks and flaws inseparable from concrete humanity.
Was once lost always lost really true of chastity?
My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!
To be conscious that the end of a dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end.
Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no – they were not perfect. and it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.
Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies.
With Sue as companion he could have renounced his ambitions with a smile. Without her it was inevitable that the reaction from the long strain to which he had subjected himself should affect him disastrously.
There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behavior. When they want to be praised, which is often; when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.
Perhaps you are making a cat’s paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it almost seems so – to see you sitting up there so prim.
I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to ’em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!
Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in “Athalie”; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola.
She was in the mood for sounds of every kind now, and strained her ears to catch the faintest, in wayward enmity to her quiet of mind.
But you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where another’s horizon is.
The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated his length from crown to toe.
But what between the poor men I won’t have, and the rich men who won’t have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!
Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come within.
When you’ve made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand – she’s as good as any other; they be all alike in groundwork: ’tis only in the flourishes there’s a difference.