I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!

There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.

It's in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.

I am well aware that I am the 'umblest person going. . . . My mother is likewise a very 'umble person. We live in a 'umble abode.

The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more.

The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.