A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage more so.

I don't suppose there's a man going, as possesses the fondness for youth that I do. There's youth to the amount of eight hundredpound a-year, at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I'd take sixteen hundred pound worth, if I could get 'em, and be as fond of every individual twenty pound among 'em as nothing should equal it!

When the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel.

That glorious vision of doing good is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds.

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

... The sun does not shine upon this fair earth to meet frowning eyes, depend upon it.

... I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us.