“What has made this nation great? Not its heroes but its households.”

“I saw William Blackett’s escaping sail already far from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak to him, but he did not see me. There was a patient look on the old man’s face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship.”

“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. ”

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

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

“The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.”