“Consider me no fool because my tongue is mad. I salt a truth with jest that it sound not dull and heavy. There is more than jig and cadence in my words. I am of stronger fiber than you think. If there comes a time for proof I shall not fail.”

“I admire wit, but I have no real liking for it. It has been too often employed against me.”

“I've had my wild times now and then — more than my share perhaps — and I don't think I'll give them up, because I like them too well.”

“I did note this, and set it down as yet one more of life’s injustices: that the man who has been wealthy is dunned more civilly than the fellow who has ever been poor. My creditors would come to me most graciously, diffident, if not downright apologetic, for asking what was theirs. It was as if I would be doing them a great, unlooked for kindness if only I would pay them a trifling sum on my outstanding debts. I would give them tea, and polite conversation, and, even when my answer to their just entreaty had to be a regretful, “Nothing, sir, ” my mortification was always entirely self-inflicted, for their civility never failed”

“I think love is stronger than habits or circumstances. I think it is possible to keep yourself for someone for a long time and still remember why you were waiting when she comes at last.”

“At fifteen, I have taken up the burdens of a woman, and have come to feel I am one. Furthermore, I am glad of it. For I now no longer have the time to fall into such sins as I committed as a girl, when hours that were my own to spend spread before me like a gift.”

“Now, of all times in my life, did I wish Caleb truly was my brother, rather than that selfish, imperious, weak-willed soul to whom fate had shackled me.”