“What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our moserable little stage!”

“At sixty, I worshiped her with the volcanic ardour of eighteen. All the gold of my rich nature was poured hopelessly at her feet. My wife – poor angel! – my wife, who adores me, got nothing but the shillings and the pennies. Such is the Work, such Man, such Love. What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our miserable little stage!”

“The only hope I have left for you hangs on a great doubt - the doubt whether we are, or are not, the masters of our own destinies. It may be that mortal free-will can conquer mortal fate; and that going, as we all do, inevitably to death, we go inevitably to nothing that is before death.”

“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”

“Marian and I avoided all further reference to that other subject, which by her consent and mine, was not to be mentioned between us yet. It was not the less present in our minds--it was rather kept alive in them by the restraint which we had imposed on ourselves”

“I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.”

“Let the music speak to us of tonight, in a happier language than our own.”