Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

"When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away."

"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."

"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs."

"Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new."

"Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness."