“There are episodes in most men's lives in which their highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill their inward version.”

“Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?”

“Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love .”

“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.”

“Of course people need not be always talking well. Only one tells the quality of their minds when they try to talk well.”

“there are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship, which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.”

“...[His] past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still keep their hold in the consciousness.”