"Beauty, thou art twice blessed; thou blessest the gazer and the possessor; often at once the effect and the cause of goodness! A sweet disposition—a lovely soul—an affectionate nature—will speak in the eyes—the lips—the brows—and become the cause of beauty. On the other hand, they who have a gift that commands love, a key that opens all hearts, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the world—to be cheerful and serene—to hope and to confide. There is more wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair face."

"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus—it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it."

"There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace."

"He who has loved often has loved never."

"The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone."

"Love is a very contradiction of all the elements of our ordinary nature: it makes the proud man meek,—the cheerful, sad,—the high-spirited, tame; our strongest resolutions, our hardiest energy, fall before it. Believe me, you cannot prophesy of its future effect in a man from any knowledge of his past character."

"Fate laughs at probabilities."

"Books are waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought."

"Buy my flowers—O buy—I pray! The blind girl comes from afar; If the earth be as fair as her children say, These flowers her children are!"

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

"Repent!—that is the idlest word in our language."

"He is certainly a man who bathes and "lives cleanly," (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed)."

"Poverty makes some humble, but more malignant."

"There are times when the mirth of others only saddens us, especially the mirth of children with high spirits, that jar on our own quiet mood."

"The magic of the tongue is the most dangerous of all spells."

"There is no anguish like an error of which we feel ashamed."

"Little minds give importance to the man who gives importance to nothing."

"The Wind and the Beam loved the Rose, And the Rose loved one: For who recks the Wind where it blows? Or loves not the Sun?None knew whence the humble Wind stole, Poor sport of the skies: None dreamt that the Wind had a soul In its mournful sighs.O happy Beam, how canst thou prove That bright love of thine? In thy light is the proof of thy love, Thou hast but to shine.How its love can the Wind reveal? Unwelcome its sigh: Mute, mute to the Rose let it steal— Its proof is—to die!"

"Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide When, moment on moment there rushes between &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;The one and the other, a sea,— Ah, never can fall from the days that have been &emsp;&emsp;&emsp;A gleam on the years that shall be."

"There is no society, however free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aristocracy."

"A good heart is better than all the heads in the world."

"The easiest person to deceive is one’s own self."

"Memory, no less than hope, owes its charm to "the far-away.""

"It is not Wisdom, but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption; Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge."

"The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen."

"It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities."

"In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale."

"The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained."

"You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!"

"I have seldom known a man cunning with his brush who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular that was not allied to general stupidity."

"Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe."

"Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor."

"Work hard and be poor, do nothing and get more."

"Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them."

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

"Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle."

"And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be — and whenever I look up, there will be you."

"A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms."

"To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine."

"A nice unparticular man."

"For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease."

"Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture."

"Good, but not religious-good."