''You had no right to be born; for you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself, as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness on some other person's strength.''

''Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after- flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.''

''Feeling without judgement is a washy draught indeed; but judgement untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a morsel for human deglutition.''

''Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.''

''It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.''

''If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.''

''Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.''

''Reader, I married him.''

''Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties.''

''You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.''