Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living.

Blows are sarcasms turned stupid.

Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.

... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.

Perfect love has a breath of poetry which can exalt the relations of the least-instructed human beings.

A man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.