I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.
it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.
Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?
I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.
I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.
Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.
Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.
The secret was such an old one now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it away.