Far from the Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in.

But a resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.