Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.

I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.

Evil thenceforth became my good.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

. . . the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.