I longed to be once more alone, to think, calmly if I could, over the position I stood in, and to resolve upon my plans for the future.
My love for Lucy Dashwood had been long rather a devotion than a hope.

My earliest dawn of manly ambition was associated with the first hour I met her.

She it was who first touched my boyish heart, and suggested a sense of chivalrous ardor within me; and even though lost to me forever, I could still regard her as the mainspring of my actions, and dwell upon my passion as the thing that hallowed every enterprise of my life.
In a word, my love, however little it might reach her heart, was everything to mine.

It was the worship of the devotee to his protecting saint.

It was the faith that made me rise above misfortune and mishap, and led me onward; and in this way I could have borne anything, everything, rather than the imputation of fickleness.
Lucy might not--nay, I felt she did not--love me.