“In all my experience along the dirtiest ways of this dirty little world, I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.”

“I am a part of all that I have met;Yet all experience is an arch wherethroughGleams that untravelled world, whose margin fadesFor ever and for ever when I move.”

“Men never know when things are dirty or not; women will have their little nonsenses and needless cares.”

“[W]hat one has as a born Catholic is something given and accepted before it is experienced. I am only slowly coming to experience things that I have all along accepted. I suppose the fullest writing comes from what has been accepted and experienced both and that I have just not got that far yet all the time. Conviction without experience makes for harshness.”

“You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing...after all, what's a life anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die...By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”

“To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.”