“Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.”

“Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.”

“Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak!”

“What a terrible thing it is to try to let off a little bit of truth into this miserable humbug of a world!”

“Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the human voice.”

“Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,—in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?”

“Men of his strength of purpose, and customary sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult than pulling up an oak.”