“Death should take me while I am in the mood.”

“America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash.”

“But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.”

“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!”

“The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.”

“There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.”

“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream : it may be so at the moment after death.”