Must we submit eternally to male tyranny?

He had never heard the term absolute love before. Unconditional love, yes – an equally impossible concept – but absolute? He turned it over his mind: it seemed more aggressive than grace, more demanding than acceptance, the complete opposite of resignation, something austere and grand – even literary.

You are so very far from perfect, but when it comes to the world and to me, you will only accept absolute love, and that’s why you always feel unsatisfied, most of all with yourself, because you are incapable of the thing you desire most. That is why it isn’t easy to love you, but also why I do.

Maria said, “Penmanship is no laughing matter, Miss Field.

I have negotiated with cannibals in foreign tongues and Arabian sea captains and French criminals. I have bartered with demons and angels! I am not about to let a country doctor take advantage of me.

There is mystery in everything,” Herman whispered, almost to himself. “And so there is poetry in everything. Even something as monstrous as a whale. But how to unlock its poetry.

And now that Thanksgiving has passed, I will take a moonlight ramble through the woods – yes, the city has its culture and cafes, and the sea has its drama, but for now give me the fallen leaves and rolling hills and the smell of the earth after a rain! Give me that over all the operas on earth, so long as I can harpoon whales with my pen!

Because I have eyes to see, as well, and if you continue to carry on so brazenly, others will be forced out of their blindness. You will end up tarred and feathered, or worse.

But how could such a great admiration be wrong ? How could it be a sin to wonder the halls of eachother’s imaginations together, discovering and building new rooms there ?

You wish to be my lover. That's the name for it. But I am a stranger to that form of love."..."I am not as steady as I may appear," said Hawthorne.