“I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.”

“When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.”

“T'ain't worthwhile to wear a day all out before it comes.”

“A harbor even if it is a little harbor is a good thing.... It takes something from the world and has something to give in return.”

“The road was new to me as roads always are going back.”

“Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.”

“I now remembered that Mrs. Todd had told me one day that Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.”

“There's more women likes to be loved than there is of those that loves.”

“There are plenty of people dragging themselves miserably through the world, because they are clogged and fettered with work for which they have no fitness... I can't help believing that nothing is better than to find one's work early and hold fast to it, and put all one's heart into it.”

“I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o' town as she was out o' tune, she wouldn't get back in a day.”

“In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.”