“You know, it would be very easy for Gilmore to break his neck on these stairs," Matt offered with a hopeful air. "Accidents do happen.""That won't be necessary, thank you," Virginia said."Just a leg perhaps?”

“His steps slowed to a stop. “Why?” His voice was a ghost in the quiet. “Why give me your trust when you know it is such an easy thing to break?”“Perhaps the easy giving of it will make it harder to break”

“If you fall down those stairs and break both of your legs, don't come running to me!”

“No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes... I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this, -- who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended, but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloon's, there is no help for it.”

“‎If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.”

“Emerson,' I said, choosing my words with care, 'it is a sheer drop from the cleft down to the base of the cliff. If you are bent on breaking your arm or your leg or your neck or all three, find a place closer to home so we won't have to carry you such a distance.”