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.

The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master.He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any.If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned - would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.

A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural stillness that had prevailed all day, sighed heavily from time to time, as though foretelling in grief the ravages of the coming storm. The bat skimmed in fantastic flights through the heavy air, and the ground was alive with crawling things, whose instinct brought them forth to swell and fatten in the rain.

"There is no deception now, Mr. Weller. Tears," said Job, with a look of momentary slyness, "tears are not the only proofs of distress, nor the best ones."

There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.

She was too intent upon her work, and too earnest in what she said, and too composed and quiet altogether, to be on the watch for any look he might direct towards her in reply; so the shaft of his ungrateful glance fell harmless, and did not wound her.

Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?