Do her virtues make her happy?
No.

Then where is the use of this boasted virtue, if it will not procure that happiness after which all are so eager in pursuit, but which none has ever yet attained?
Was Christ, who is said to have been spotless, happy?
No; he was a man of sorrows.

Away, then, with this cant of virtue.

It is a shadow, a deception; a thing, like religion, that has no existence, but takes our senses, our interests, and our passions, and works with them under its own mask.

Yet why am I afraid of my daughter?
and why do I, in my heart, reverence her as a being so far superior to myself?
Why is it that I could murder--ay, murder--this worthless object that thrust himself, or would thrust himself, or might thrust himself, between me and the hereditary honors of my name, were it not that her very presence, if I did it, would, I feel, overpower and paralyze me with a sense of my guilt?
Yet I struck her--I struck her; but her spirit trampled mine in the dust--she humiliated me.