'Ella

“We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“The beggarly question of parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“I take up my own pen again - the pen of all my old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself - today - I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.”
― Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae