Happiness in life is not a given, it must be seized.

It's a funny thing, character, the way it brands people as they age, rising from within to leave its scar.

Hope's one thing, expectation's quite another.

. . . companions were to be valued, wherever one found them.

Hope, how she had grown to hate the word. It was an insideious seed planted inside a person's soul, surviving covertly on little tending, then flowering so spectacularly that none could help but cherish it.

It was such a pleasure to sink one's hands into the warm earth, to feel at one's fingertips the possibilities of the new season.

Oh, there was harm indeed for a young lady flattered by the brief attentions of a handsome man.