“Accidents will occur in the best regulated families.”

“Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!”

“Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“A boy's story is the best that is ever told.”

“Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we'd give blood.”

“And what's the best of all," he said, "you've been more comfortable alonger me, since I was under a dark cloud, than when the sun shone. That's the best of all.”