What connexion can there be, between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs, have, nevertheless, been very curiously brought together!

if the world go wrong, it was, in some off-hand manner, never meant to go right.

I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death.

A day wasted on others is not wasted on one's self.

...a writer without authority? Impossible. as Kenneth Burke says, creation implies authority in the sense of originator....

...people quote proverbs without realizing they're really in awe of the authority of their truth and the power of their expression...