A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become manias.

All the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and desert place to a mother when her only child is absent.

Margaret found that the indifferent, careless conversations of one who, however kind, was not too warm and anxious a sympathizer, did her good.

I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.

If Mr. Thornton was a fool in the morning, as he assured himself at least twenty times he was, he did not grow much wiser in that afternoon. All that he gained in return for his sixpenny omnibus ride, was a more vivid conviction that there never was, never could be, any one like Margaret; that she did not love him and never would; but that she — no! nor the whole world — should never hinder him from loving her.

He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so hard to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself - was a great fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him.

How am I to dress up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after the sorrow I have seen today?