Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years it was a splendid laugh!

Heaven suits the back to the burden.

I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That's the best way, ain't it?

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.

‎And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.