Bernadette

“In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us indissolubly with the established order.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“J. Malachi tried to count sheep, feeling that this was a practice which should be revived in the modern era, but he got bored after about seventy. This is what I get for being a deracinated postmodern, he thought. I've lost touch with the agricultural roots of culture.”
― Eve Tushnet, Amends

“My dear Lascelles,” cried Drawlight, “what nonsense you talk! Upon my word, there is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure – it is, after all, what every body does all the time.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell