George Eliot

From Thea

“With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.”

"What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind--the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship."