Consanguinity

'There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.' 'The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.' 'My love was founded on a rock.'

—Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, ch. XLV, p. 591.

Turn the Page

Turn the page! Believe again! You have forgotten how to believe in anything beyond your chosen treadmill. You have grown out of the fairy tale age, you say. But what have you grown into? Do you like it? ...

They have forgotten. Let me forget too. Surely it must be easier to forget that there is a page to be turned than to know it's there and not be able to turn it! How long? How long must I remember? ...

... forever after ... forever after ...

—Zenna Henderson, Turn the Page, in The Anything Box, p. 158.

David Copperfield

The man who reviews his own life had need to have been a good man, indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well.... Never to put one hand to anything on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules. How much of the practice I have just reduced to precept I owe to Agnes I will not repeat here.

—Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, ch. XLII, p. 539-540.