“Men and women ain't lumps of sugar. They don't melt because the water is sometimes warm.”

“But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,--cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness.”

“The end of a novel, like the end of children’s dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum”

“He's a very handsome man, is the captain," said Jeaneatte. . ."You shouldn't think about handsome men, child," said Mrs. Greenow."And I'm sure I don't," said Jeanette. "Not more than anybody else; but if a man is handsome, ma'am, why, it stands to reason that he is handsome.”

“As for reading, I doubt whether she did much better by the sea-side than she had done in the town. Men and women say that they will read, and think so—those, I mean, who have acquired no habit of reading—believing the work to be, of all works, the easiest. It may be work, they think, but of all works it must be the easiest of achievement. Given the absolute faculty of reading, the task of going through the pages of a book must be, of all tasks, the most certainly within the grasp of the man or woman who attempts it. Alas! no; if the habit be not there, of all tasks it is the most difficult.”

“There are men whose energies hardly ever carry them beyond looking for the thing they want.”

“He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.”