“I LOVED her! ay, I would have given
A death-bed certainty of heaven
If I had thought it could confer
The least of happiness on her!”

“Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.”

“She's had so little love, Jesse thought, I will drown her in it for the rest of her life.”

“He loved her, and he would love her until the day he was too old for loving--but he could not have her. So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.”

“But as I guided her to my belt and then laid her down on the bed, I knew which way our path would go. Webe together forever. We had to be. There was no way that all these feelings between us could ever dim or be defeated.”

“That night I lay in bed, remembering the moment when her hand touched mine. I wondered what it would be like to have her touch me not by accident, to maybe have her let me touch her.”

“Death by hanging. That, at least, I thought I would be spared.”

“But you love her.”
Will stared at him. “Of course I do,” he
said finally. “I had come to think I would
never love anyone, but I love her.”

“I loved him as young Genius loves,
When its own wild and radiant heaven
Of starry thought burns with the light,
The love, the life, by passion given.
I loved him, too, as woman loves--
Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn:
Life had no evil destiny
That, with him, I could not have borne!”

“[From Minna after stabbing Pauline von Lindorf to death]: Yes, I have killed her at last. They thought I did not know her, but I did. She took away my father's heart from me, and would have taken away my husband’s; but I have killed her at last.”