She must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance.

It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!

The pain of aloneness and pointlessness is piercing. It demands relief. That single fact — that the pain of living apart from God is unbearable — exposes our sinfulness as horribly grotesque and foolish. We insist on finding relief without coming to God on His terms.

Father, I leave them in your hands, for mine are far too small and weak. You are God, and I thank you.

Facing a situation head on was the only way to deal with anything. I learned the lesson early.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.

Why don't you cry again, you little wretch? -Because I'll never cry for you again.

When a plunge is to be made into the water, it's of no use lingering on the bank.

A man would die tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pitty in all the glittering multitude.

What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I!

You are a little low this evening, Frederick,' said the Father of the Marshalsea. 'Anything the matter?

Mr. Boffin, as if he were about to have his portrait painted, or to be electrified, or to be made a Freemason, or to be placed at any other solitary disadvantage, ascended the rostrum prepared for him.