All human rules are more or less idiotic.

Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'.

If they [the dead] should speak, it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life. They would realise, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not really what they seem to be-and never can be.

All good things arrive unto them that wait - and don't die in the meantime.

A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain.