“Matthew gave her such a hurt, wistful, nobly forbearing, and absolutely infuriating look that if Caroline had been a rich aunt she would have cut him out of her will on the spot.”

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

“What did she love Shelley for? His reckless spontaneity -- like this. His helpless generous nature -- like this. His treatment of her as a reasonable human being and not a trembling little rose -- and so on. If she loved him for these things, could she hate him for them? Could she?”

“She sincerely wishes success, for her new life, and intends that no failure of effort, temper, or spirits on her part will jeopardise it.”

“Probably no purer incitement to hatred existed, Lydia had found, than being told of anyone or anything: you will love him, her or it. The spirit immediately rose up like a fanged cobra.”

“Emily’s world fascinates and disturbs: in it you can touch thick Yorkshire speech, and moorland rain slants across your mind with a smell of mossy limestone and yet you are not at home, you might almost be in Gondal or Angria except the towers and the dungeons are of the spirit, the dungeons especially; and sometimes when Emily reads out in her low, almost guttural voice Charlotte wants to run but can’t think why or where she would run to.”

“I have never understood why a woman must have a man to take her into dinner.”