"Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, "of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy."

Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it.

No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

Have a heart that never hardens

Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy. -Miss Havisham

While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal sea.

On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels . . .