I don't wish to treat you like an inferior: that is (correcting himself), I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in experience.

And it is you, spirit--with will and energy, and virtue and purity--that I want, not alone with your brittle frame.

As far as my experience of matrimony goes -- I think it tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself.

If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed.

I have no wish to talk nonsense." "If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.

Human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.

Life is still life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced.