Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

"He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, and lets his eyes rest on her. I am inclined to think that she don't care for him quite so much as he does for her. She's not a particular warm-hearted creature to my thinking, though she cares for him pretty middling much-- as much as she's able to; and he could make her heart ache a bit if he liked to try--which he's too simple to do."

"You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!"

"I hate to be what is called a clever girl—there are too many of that sort now!"

"But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high--innocent or guilty. She'd have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It's all the same in the end! However, I think she's fond of her man still--whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on-- her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women. Besides, you've got the laws on your side. Moses knew."

"You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages."

"Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most self-contained in their daily lives."

"Love has its own dark morality when rivalry enters in."

"All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun."

"It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses--affections--vices perhaps they should be called-- were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his country's worthies. You may ridicule me--I am quite willing that you should-- I am a fit subject, no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knew"--he nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally arriving--"it is just possible they would do the same."

"Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and another."

"If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man."

"you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness."

"I have sometimes thought--that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!"

"being a harp which the least wind of emotion from another’s heart could make to vibrate as readily as a radical stir in her own."

"Like enthusiasts in general, he made no inquiries into details of procedure."

"They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men."

"An average woman is in this superior to an average man—that she never instigates, only responds."

"The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above given."

"Always wanting another man than your own."

"You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you."