No action is ever lost - nothing we do is without result. It's obvious, of course, but how many people ever really believe it, or act as if it were s… - Robertson Davies

People are not saints just because they haven't got much money or education.

But I was a lonely creature, and although I would have been very happy to have a friend I just never happened to meet one.

she swore in good mouth-filling oaths, but never smutty ones, and that was uncommon. She knew the prosody of profanity. . . . she knew the tune, as well as the words. She was not a raving beauty, but she had fine eyes and a Pre-Raphelite air of being too good for this world while at the same time exhibiting much of what this world desires in a woman, and I suppose I gaped at her and behaved clownishly.