Mr Lorry asks the witness questions: Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.
There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last respect a rather common one.
Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.
Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it – as at last I did, thank Heaven! – and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.
Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.
So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.
We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!
It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.
Can I view thee panting, lying On thy stomach, without sighing; Can I unmoved see thee dying On a log Expiring frog!
The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.
The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.
I must do something or I shall wear my heart away...
It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.
Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?
She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog,’ sir.
When I speak of home, I speak of the place where in default of a better – those I love are gathered together; and if that place where a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.
The cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.
I distress you; I draw fast to an end.
My heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman. I have no thought, no view, no hope, in life beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.
Are there no prisons?