He was poor, yet always appeared to be giving something away; a stranger, yet everyone was his friend; no longer young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face looked beautiful to many.

…I can't help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to my heart.

For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all.

Well, I am happy, and I won't fret, but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants.

[She was] kept there in the sort of embrace a man gives to the dearest creature the world holds for him.

Love and Loyalty If ever men and women are their simplest, sincerest selves, it is when suffering softens the one, and sympathy strengthens the other.

In the books I read the sinners are always more interesting than the saints, and in real life good people are dismally dull. I've no desire to be wicked, but I do want to be happy. A short life and a gay one for me and I'm willing to pay for my pleasure if it is necessary.