No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.

Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.

Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!

Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.

Every crime destroys more Edens than our own

But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price-purchased with all she had-her mother's only treasure!