“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.”

“Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms.”

“The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnising my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life.”

“I agree with you," replied the stranger; "we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves -- such a friend ought to be -- do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures. I once had a friend, the most noble of human creatures, and am entitled, therefore, to judge respecting friendship. You have hope, and the world before you, and have no cause for despair. But I -- I have lost everything, and cannot begin life anew.”

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”

“Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.”

“To bestow on your fellow men is a Godlike attribute--So indeed it is and as such not one fit for mortality;--the giver, like Adam and Prometheus, must pay the penalty of rising above his nature by being the martyr of his own excellence.”