Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

There can be...no power...to disclose...the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them until the day when all hidden things be revealed.

There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.

My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.

There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections.

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.

But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.