“Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.”

“I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.”

“When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.”

“It had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us indissolubly with the established order.”

“Dorothea, he said to himself, was for ever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher than her footstool...”

“He wanted to tell her how much he preferred to look at her, that only by watching could he memorize her, and take her and possess her. He did not know how to explain that he could not touch better or more fully with his hands than he could with his eyes. Seeing encompassed all at once; a touch was limited to one spot at a time.”

“He has explained why it is that ambiguity touches his heart more nearly than the death and marriage style of finish that i prefer.”