The sky was clear — remarkably clear — and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse. - Thomas Hardy

Within his temples felt thoughts not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations. Thus, to his physical attractiveness was added the attractiveness of mental inaccessibility.

The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it.

She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind, her thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part — vistas of probable triumphs — the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won.