“Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.”

“The Sinister Spirit sneered: 'It had to be!'And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, 'Why?”

“Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

“All the while she wondered if any strange good thing might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight.”

“Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe.”

“There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behavior. When they want to be praised, which is often; when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.”