The second cause of failure to enact good stems from conflict of intention. High intelligence leads to multiplicity of interest and a sharpened capac… - John Fowles

Utram bibis? Aquam an undam?
What are you drinking? The water or the wave?

I am Emma Woodhouse. I feel for her, of her and in her. I have a different sort of snobbism, but I understand her snobbism. Her priggishness. I admire it. I know she does wrong things, she tries to organize other people's lives, she can't see Mr Knightley is a man in a million. She's temporarily silly, yet all the time one knows she's basically intelligent. Creative, determined to set the highest standards. A real human being.

Knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. All those bitter home truths she had flung at me, right from the beginning…and still loved me; was so blind that she still loved me. One day she had said: When you love me (and she had not meant “make love to me”) it’s as if God forgave me for being the mess I am; and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and so give me a sense of responsibility towards her.