How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #13
"How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me!... I do not deserve my lot!" she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. "O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at all!" (5.7.20)
Eustacia's final soliloquy is very dramatic. Stylistically, this reads like something right out of a play. The diction here is also pretty archaic, or old-fashioned – Eustacia uses "O" a lot, which is yet another example of how this resembles dialogue in a play, possibly a Shakespearean tragedy.
Quote #14
To have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise. (1.7.20)
This is a good example of how the narrator breaks in with some "wise" commentary. Here, Hardy uses a lot of big words to say that people who are confident and "godlike" in their behavior are all well and good in "the abstract," or in theory, but in reality aren't all that great.