“Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's no longer anything."
She repeats, "You see — I'm nothing any more."
Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me. Her thought is higher and vaster. She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, "I'm no longer anything." And I — I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.
I should like to pacify and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence — but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief.
"Ah!" she cries, "if we came to life again!"”

Pt. IV, ch. V
Jude the Obscure (1895)

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Kentucky Woman (1967)
Song lyrics

Loving Life http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Loving-Life. Oprah.com. May 23, 2005.

"I Knew a Woman," ll. 1 - 4
Words for the Wind (1958)

Algernon, Act I
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

The winter of '41-'42
This Business of Living (1935-1950)

La jeune fille n'a qu'une coquetterie, et croit avoir tout dit quand elle a quitté son vêtement; mais la femme en a d'innombrables et se cache sous mille voiles; enfin elle caresse toutes les vanités, et la novice n'en flatte qu'une. Il s'émeut d'ailleurs des indécisions, des terreurs, des craintes, des troubles et des orages chez la femme de trente ans, qui ne se rencontrent jamais dans l'amour d'une jeune fille.Arrivée à cet âge, la femme demande à un jeune homme de lui restituer l'estime qu'elle lui a sacrifiée; elle ne vit que pour lui, s'occupe de son avenir, lui veut une belle vie, la lui ordonne glorieuse; elle obéit, elle prie et commande, s'abaisse et s'élève, et sait consoler en mille occasions, où la jeune fille ne sait que gémir.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. III: At Thirty Years.