Quotation from: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard

Written by: Joseph Conrad

He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if overwhelmed by a sort
of awed happiness, with the lines of the mocking smile still stiffened
about his mouth, and incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a
sentence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing new can be
said by man or woman; and those were the last words, it seemed to him,
that could ever have been spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up
with her so completely in all their intercourse of small encounters; but
even before she had time to turn towards him, which she did slowly with
a rigid grace, he had begun to plead--