“A woman of seven and twenty, said Marianne, after pausing a moment, can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.”

“She knew that what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next: that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.”

“After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope.”

“Yes," Bitterblue said. "I suppose you could convert everything into minutes. Twelve times sixty is seven hundred twenty, and fifteen times fifty is seven hundred fifty. So our seven-hundred-twenty-minute half day equals its seven-hundred-fifty-minute half day. Let's see...Right now, the watch reads a time of nearly twenty-five past two. That's one hundred twenty-five total minutes, which, divided by seven hundred fifty, should equal our time in minutes divided by seven hundred twenty...so, seven hundred twenty times one hundred twenty-five is...give me a moment...ninety thousand...divided by seven hundred fifty...is one hundred twenty...which means...well! The numbers are quite neat, aren't they? It's just about two o'clock. I should go home.”

“... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.”

“If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.”