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

Your presence is a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous.

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

The "walk in" was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, "Go to the Deuce".

A stranger is a stranger, be he rich or poor.

Pulling out the nerves with red hot pincers requires more coolness than knocking on the head.

Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?

He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

Nobody loves you—nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn’t be you!

...and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!

A good heart will help you to a bonny face, if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.

Two words would comprehend my future—death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell.

— And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?’ I said.
— Of dissolving with her.

Incomparably beyond and above us all!

I love papa better than myself, Ellen; and I know it by this: I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be.

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