Keep out of Chancery. It's being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad by grains.

I think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here [in America], and be happy.

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.

We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls.

"Oh!" said my aunt, "I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting."

He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.

I have always thought of Christmas time... as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time.