“For certain, neither of them sees a happy Present, as the gate opens and closes, and one goes in, and the other goes away.”

“[...] this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.”

“Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is always, the one which first presents itself to them.”

“And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”

“Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down!”

“A heart well worth winning, and well won. A heart that, once won, goes through fire and water for the winner, and never changes, and is never daunted.”

“every idiot who goes about with a 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.”