“Tact is after all a kind of mind-reading.”

“I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.”

“This is a very small world; we are all within hail of each other. I dare say when we get to Heaven there will not be a stranger to make friends with.”

“There are plenty of people dragging themselves miserably through the world, because they are clogged and fettered with work for which they have no fitness... I can't help believing that nothing is better than to find one's work early and hold fast to it, and put all one's heart into it.”

“In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.”

“Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of. ”

“It seems to me like stealing, for men and women to live in the world and do nothing to make it better.”