“She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle — a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life's delirium.”

“What is that the inherence of which, will render the body alive? [The soul. ] …Then whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life? …And is there an opposite to life? [Death. ] Then the soul, as she has been acknowledged, will never receive the opposite of what she brings. …And what do we call the principle which does not admit of death? [The immortal. ] And does the soul admit of death? [No. ] Then the soul is immortal?”

“She kept her face to the floor, moving in her personal oblivion, her sunflower eyes fixed on the predicament of her life we would never understand.”

“The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant.”

“A while she stood
Transformed by grief to marble, and appeared
Her own pale monument; but when she breathed
The secret anguish of her wounded soul,
So moving were the plaints! they would have soothed
The stooping falcon to suspend his flight,
And spare his morning prey.”

“If the life of one girl changes through education, she changes three families – one, her own, second the in which she gets married into, and third the one she builds. This moves the nation on its path to progress.”

“… and best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander, where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her.”

“She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.”

“She understood too much. She understood that she had reached her destiny point, that time and the circumstances of her life had conspired to bring her to this place. For one ecstatic moment she was the axis on which the stars revolved.”

“Ophelia is a little walking owl, bewitched by her unconscious feminine, her father, and what "they say." She never finds her own voice. She never finds her own body or her own feelings and therefore misses life and love in the here and now. Gradually the waters of the unconscious to which she is "native and indued" swallow her.”