The only good government... Is a bad one in a hell of a fright.

God is a character, a real and consistent being, or He is nothing. If God did a miracle He would deny His own nature and the universe would simply blow up, vanish, become nothing.

An old mans memories, like his bones, grow sharp with age and show their true shapes.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

Funeral expenses are the curse of the poor everywhere on earth, they are wasteful and unnecessary, they are the price of foolish ostentation and a display that is less an evidence of grief than a vulgar travesty of those pompous obsequies where no grief is.

Where can one find a profounder desolation than in the poor child who has lost its mother?

It was as dark as the inside of a cabinet minister.