“Imagination shrinks from the consequences.”

“Anne’s is a world very like this one, and you can move about in it with familiarity - but not freedom: it is a place of rigorous consequence, where the weak have to give way to the strong, where her governess heroine Agnes must walk as best she can in the cold shade of money and masculinity.”

“It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard”

“None of us like to think we are silly. But all must acknowledge that they are capable of silliness, from time to time”

“But then she often felt like this lately. The world seemed full of transparent frauds that only she could see through. She was forever shouting from the hustings of honesty, though if any honesty were directed at her she ran from it horrified. And she knew it, laughed at herself for it, wretchedly. She was all to pieces.”

“I must try to be charitable, Caroline thought: probably she doesn't mean to sound as if she is continually translating from Latin.”

“I found out when I went away from Wythorpe the first time in November--remember? How nice it is to rhyme, I must do it all the time.”