the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.

I 'spect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me.

It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed - who cannot speak for themselves.

I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.

Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt.

Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.

Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.