I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.

I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.

Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm.

Your will shall decide your destiny.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.

Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation.

You have introduced a topic on which our natures are at variance - a topic we should never discuss: the very name of love is an apple of discord between us. If the reality were required, what should we do? How should we feel? My dear cousin, abandon your scheme of marriage - forget it.