We are always in search of the redeeming quality or deed that shall make us satisfied with our own evil and ours is a life that is not to be separated from the evil to which it gives birth.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time.' Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less.

We are more sensible of what is done against custom than against nature.