“It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.”

Nay, you’ll be ashamed of me everyday of your life,” he answered; “and the more ashamed, the more you know me; and I cannot bide it.

A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.

I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.

Yes, as my swift days near their goal, ’tis all that I implore: In life and death a chainless soul, with courage to endure.

Terror made me cruel.

Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.

I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.

If I had caused the cloud, it was my duty to make an effort to dispel it.

Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?

A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.

I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… Why am I so changed? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.

I understand that most ladies tend to prefer lap dogs…. Perhaps I am an exception.

He’ll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to loved or hated again.

By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.

Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light.

In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible — such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?

The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappiness does not unite people, but separates them.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.

When I cannot understand my Father’s leading, And it seems to be but hard and cruel fate, Still I hear that gentle whisper ever pleading, God is working, God is faithful-Only wait.

I believe we all deserve good endings. We were kind people before this world turned us cruel.

The soul that has conceived one wickedness can nurse no good thereafter.