He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy - those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.

There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.

When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

That which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.

The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.

My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.