Money was their God; work their religion.

The wages of sin are the hardest debts on earth to pay, and they are always collected at inconvenient times and unexpected places.

We never know the timber of a man's soul until something cuts into him deeply and brings the grain out strong. You've the making of a mighty fine piece of furniture.

I do not know why it is the fate of the world always to want something different from what life gives them.

it takes the very wisest person there is to know when to talk, and when to keep still.

there was nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly used.

the occasional cries of a lost loon, strayed from its flock in northern migration, fill the swamp with sounds of wailing.