“I was left alone there in the company of the orchids, roses and violets, which, like people waiting beside you who do not know you, preserved a silence which their individuality as living things made all the more striking, and warmed themselves in the heat of a glowing coal fire...”

“Edward was at the stage of drunkenness in which the ego glows like a coal, and brilliant people become more inspired, but in which dull people, fired by the same inspiration, become only more dull.”

“The old dead coals fell to the wayside, warm ones sat glowing weakly on the edges; but the hot new ones, red and burning, poured their heat into the centre of cook fire.”

“You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while.”

“It is our collective and individual responsibility to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live.”

“But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal dropped in the sea.”