“if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.”

“You touch some of the reasons for my going, not for my staying away.”

“If you can't get to be uncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. [...] live well and die happy.”

“Perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.”

“I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears.We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”

“Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do'...He might have written with as much truth, 'Satan finds some mischief for busy hands too.' The busy people achieve their full share of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it. What have the people been about, who have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting power, this century or two? No mischief?”

“Everybody said so.Far be it from me to assert that what everybody says must be true. Everybody is, often, as likely to be wrong as right. In the general experience, everybody has been wrong so often, and it has taken in most instances such a weary while to find out how wrong, that the authority is proved to be fallible. Everybody may sometimes be right; "but that's no rule," as the ghost of Giles Scroggins says in the ballad.”