He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never be… - Thomas Hardy

Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.

Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself.

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?

Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and another.