We are apt to be angry with this cruel hardness in our lifeâ€”this unflinching regularity in the smaller wheels and meaner mechanism of the human machine, which knows no stoppage or cessation, though the mainspring be forever hollow, and the hands pointing to purposeless figures on a shattered dial.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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To call them the weaker sex is to utter a hideous mockery. They are the stronger sex, the noisier, the more persevering, the most self-assertive sex.

— Mary Elizabeth Braddon

What had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smouldering spark, too dull to be distinguished, too feeble to burn? But *this* was love - this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation [...]

— Mary Elizabeth Braddon

For you see Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile

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. . . and he knew that our dreams are none the less terrible to lose, because they have never been the realities for which we have mistaken them.

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Now love is so very subtle an essence, such an indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force, though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never clearly understood by those who look on at his torments and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly.

— Mary Elizabeth Braddon