"Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read "Dora Thorne," or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that p… - Theodore Dreiser

If I were personally to define religion, I would say that it is a bandage that man has invented to protect a soul made bloody by circumstance.

You have heard the wood-dove calling in the lone stillness of the summertime; you have found the unheeded brooklet singing and babbling where no ear comes to hear. Under dead leaves and snow-banks the delicate arbutus unfolds its simple blossom, answering some heavenly call for color. So, too, this other flower of womanhood. Jennie was left alone, but, like the wood-dove, she was a voice of sweetness in the summer-time. Going about her household duties, she was content to wait, without a murmur, the fulfilment of that process for which, after all, she was but the sacrificial implement.

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.