“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

“It was a dark and stormy night...”

“We love the beautiful and serene, but we have a feeling as deep as love for the terrible and dark.”

“The spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly educated, but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions of endearment there was a kind of rough, wild love; but here and there were dark unintelligible hints at some secret not of love,----some secret that seemed of crime. "We ought to love each other," was one of the sentences I remember, "for how everyone else would execrate us if all was known." Again: "Don't let anyone be in the same room with you at night,----you talk in your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone; and I tell you there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to life." Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female's), "They do!”

“He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.”

“We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.”

“Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can”