Some people are nobody's enemies but their own

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.

Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.

The citizen ... preserved the resolute bearing of one who was not to be frowned down or daunted, and who cared very little for any nobility but that of worth and manhood.

You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me.

I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.

I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.