“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.”

“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.”

“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 love you more than I can express, or can ever hope to express”

“So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable.”

“Perhaps grown women are beings of a good deal more complexity than cats”