Both the ancestry and posterity of Grief go further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy.

Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure.

...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort.

The only true infidelity is for a live man to vote himself dead.

I baptize you not in the name of the father, but in the name of the devil. (Ego baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli.)

The worst of our evils we blindly inflict upon ourselves; our officers cannot remove them, even if they would.

An indiscriminate distrust of human nature is the worst consequence of a miserable condition, whether brought about by innocence or guilt. And though want of suspicion more than want of sense, sometimes leads a man into harm; yet too much suspicion is as bad as too little sense.