“Without knowing it he drew a very pleasant picture of an affectionate, happy family who lived unpretentiously in circumstances of moderate affluence at peace with themselves and the world and undisturbed by any fear that anything might happen to affect their security. The life he described lacked neither grace nor dignity; it was healthy and normal, and through its intellectual interests not entirely material; the persons who led it were simple and honest, neither ambitious nor envious, prepared to do their duty by the state and by their neighbors according to their lights; and there was in them neither harm nor malice. If Lydia saw how much of their good nature, their kindliness, their unpleasing self-complacency depended on the long-established and well-ordered prosperity of the country that had given them birth; if she had an inkling that, like children building castles on the sea sand, they might at any moment be swept away by a tidal wave, she allowed no sign of it to appear on her face.”

“Neither the dissipations of the past--and she had lived very much in the world, nor the restrictions of the present; neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her heart or ruined her spirits.”

“Those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.”

“He looked on people, and he neither liked nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither heartened nor saddened.”

“She did not really like her. She would not be in a hurry to find fault, but she suspected that there was no elegance, ease, but not elegance... Her person was rather good; her face not unpretty; but neither feature nor air, nor voice, nor manner were elegant.”

“...you have neither wife nor child (without any sexual feeling, she longed to cherish that loneliness)...”