The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all. - Thomas Hardy

And the thorny crown of this sad conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.

She showed that oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps more frequent in women of darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond’s was; women who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak to them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer.

there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would had disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there