... Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed a felony and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.

Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering.

What are the odds so long as the fire of the soul is kindled at the taper of conviviality, and the wing of friendship never molts a feather?

We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

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.

In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.

A contented spirit is the sweetness of existence.