George Eliot

“ I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity."
"Ah, there is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless," said Wakem, still bitterly, though Philip's last words had given him a pang; they had stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter of a century. He threw himself into the chair again.
"I expected all this," said Philip. "I know these scenes are often happening between father and son. If I were like other men of my age, I might answer your angry words by still angrier; we might part; I should marry the woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as the rest. ”

“ Of course you are independent of me; you can marry this girl to-morrow, if you like; you are a man of five-and-twenty,–you can go your way, and I can go mine. We need have no more to do with each other."
Wakem rose and walked toward the door, but something held him back, and instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Philip was slow to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness than ever.
"No; I can't marry Miss Tulliver, even if she would have me, if I have only my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to no profession. ”

“ Philip paused, but his father was silent.
"You know best what satisfaction you would have, beyond that of gratifying a ridiculous rancor worthy only of wandering savages."
"Ridiculous rancor!" Wakem burst out. "What do you mean? Damn it! is a man to be horsewhipped by a boor and love him for it? ”

“ "I don't mean your resentment toward them," said Philip, who had his reasons for some sympathy with this view of Tom, "though a feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean your extending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense and goodness to share their narrow prejudices. She has never entered into the family quarrels."
"What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does; we ask whom she belongs to. ”

“ Ogg's who will not tell you that a beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a pitiable object like me."
"Not she!" said Wakem, rising again, and forgetting everything else in a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. "It would be a deuced fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental deformity, when a girl's really attached to a man."
"But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances," said Philip. ”

“ But if it will be a satisfaction to you to annihilate the very object of everything you've done for me, you have an advantage over most fathers; you can completely deprive me of the only thing that would make my life worth having. ”

“ Deane's stamp, what goes on among the young people is as extraneous to the real business of life as what goes on among the birds and butterflies, until it can be shown to have a malign bearing on monetary affairs. ”