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.

I am at the moment deaf in the ears, hoarse in the throat, red in the nose, green in the gills, damp in the eyes, twitchy in the joints and fractious in temper from a most intolerable and oppressive cold.

"I know quite enough of myself," said Bella, with a charming air of being inclined to give herself up as a bad job, "and I don't improve upon acquaintance..."

... I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution - not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.

There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen.

We need never be ashamed of our tears.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.