But it would not do: I rated my fortitude too high, or my love too low.

I should certainly have died if you had not hastened to me.

Would that I had been indeed extinguished! "And now, Mathilda I must make you my last confession.

I have been miserably mistaken in imagining that I could conquer my love for you; I never can.

The sight of this house, these fields and woods which my first love inhabited seems to have encreased it: in my madness I dared say to myself--Diana died to give her birth; her mother's spirit was transferred into her frame, and she ought to be as Diana to me.[37] With every effort to cast it off, this love clings closer, this guilty love more unnatural than hate, that withers your hopes and destroys me for ever.
Better have loved despair, & safer kissed her.
No time or space can tear from my soul that which makes a part of it.
Since my arrival here I have not for a moment ceased to feel the hell of passion which has been implanted in me to burn untill all be cold, and stiff, and dead.