The cow had ceased to give milk for that year, and Bathsheba Everdene came up the hill no more.

Gabriel had reached a pitch of existence he never could have anticipated a short time before.

He liked saying "Bathsheba" as a private enjoyment instead of whistling; turned over his taste to black hair, though he had sworn by brown ever since he was a boy, isolated himself till the space he filled in the public eye was contemptibly small.

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.

Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.