“But compare the hardest day's work you ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into spiders' stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something it must think o...”

“The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still and colourless met us without a smile.”

“I am an average good Christian, when you don't push my Christianity too far. And all the rest of youwhich is a great comfortare, in this respect, much the same as I am.”

“You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tri...”

“If you will look about you (which most people won't do)," says Sergeant Cuff, "you will see that the nature of a man's tastes is, most times, as opposite as possible to the nature of a man's business.”

“He was, out of all sight (as I remember him), the nicest boy that ever spun a top or broke a window.”

“Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you.”

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: youre falling to the floor crying ...”

“Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.”