"I don't pretend to know what people are meant for," said Madame Merle. "I only know what I can do with them." — Henry James

What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar.

She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease – of suffering as opposed to doing. To "do" – it hardly mattered what – would therefore be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy.

Don't mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.