Conscience is the same in my view as an inherited disease which may possibly break out on any most innocent physical indulgence. - George Gissing

But we have no money. Suffer as we may, there's no help for it — because we have no money. Lives may be wasted — worse, far worse than wasted — just because there is no money. At this moment a whole world of men and women is in pain and sorrow — because they have no money. How often have we said that? The world is made so; everything has to be bought with money.

If it became known that she had taken a step such as few women would have dared to take — deliberately setting an example of new liberty — her position in the eyes of all who knew her remained one of proud independence.

The earning of money should be a means to an end; for more than thirty years — I began to support myself at sixteen — I had to regard it as the end itself.