“I thirsted for the unknown: the thirst is gone. O God, let me stay with the known, and be weary of it: I am content.”

“Just a month from this day, on the twentieth of September, 1850, I shall be sitting in this chair, in this study, at ten o' clock at night, longing to die, weary of incessant insight and foresight, without delusions and without hope.”

“Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers.”

“A bit o' bread's what I like from one year's end to the other; but men's stomachs are made so comical, they want a change--they do, I know, God help 'em.”

“I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming to see me.”

“Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than - than those we were married to, it would be no use. I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear, but it murders our marriage, and then the marriage stays with us like a murder, and everything else is gone.”

“Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.”