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"It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished . . ."
"When men are about to commit, or sanction the commission of some injustice, it is not uncommon for them to express pity for the object either of that or some parallel proceeding, and to feel themselves, at the time, quite virtuous and moral, and immensely superior to those who express no pity at all. This is a kind of upholding of faith above works, and is very comfortable."
"To have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!"
"Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness."
""Ecod, you may say what you like of my father, then, and so I give you leave," said Jonas. "I think it's liquid aggravation that circulates through his veins, and not regular blood...""
"He wore a sprinkling of powder upon his head, as if to make himself look benevolent; but if that were his purpose, he would perhaps have done better to powder his countenance also, for there was something in its very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him."
"The expression of a man's face is commonly a help to his thoughts, or glossary on his speech; but the countenance of Newman Noggs, in his ordinary moods, was a problem which no stretch of ingenuity could solve."
""A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight.""
"But the words she spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive ... nor worms forget."
"Being that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her."
""Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another thing.""
"Oh Agnes, Oh my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!"
"I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!"
"Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was."
"I'd lay down my life for her - Mas'r Davy - Oh! most content and cheerful! She's more to me - gent'lmen - than - she's all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I - than ever I could say. I - I love her true. There ain't a gent'lman in all the land - nor yet sailing upon all the sea - that can love his lady more than I love her."
""And when you had made sure of the poor little fool," said my aunt - "God forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won't go in a hurry - because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR notes?""
""Well, well!" said my aunt. "I only ask. I don't depreciate her. Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?""
"I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason-but who would as soon love me for my own sake, as she would love the beggar at the corner."
""You see," said Mr. Toots, "what I wanted in a wife was - in short, was sense. Money, Feeder, I had. Sense I - I had not, particularly.""
"Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering."