“Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy, perhaps.”

“Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

“May you have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

“I could settle down into a state ofequable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee.”

“his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.”

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

“From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.”