“All things merge in one another - good into evil, generosity into justice, religion into politics...”

“Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.”

“Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, she had handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favors here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now.”

“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”

“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.”

“I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”

“Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.”