“Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a grea...”

“This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on his breast and said 'Yes', without raising his eyes, as if afraid to see writ large on the clear...”

“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”

“Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.”

“It was a dark story.”

“How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?”

“If a man does not work passionately - even furiously - at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.”

“I mean a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all if it should prov...”

“Not everything you're good at is what you're called to do.”

“The subsistence mentality of a person is a prison in which his personal joy is detained. If you want to live in joy, you don't live for yourself alone. Live for others too!”

“Jagged needle, wicked liesFrom under the skin, pluck evil eyes.Destiny change from pain and coldNow that you pay in blood and soul.”

“My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Di...”

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

“First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED!”

“When the spirit of nature touches us, our hearts turn into a butterfly!”