Martin Chuzzlewit

If friars bear such hearts as thine, Tom, let friars multiply; though they have no such rule in all their stern arithmetic.

Quoted on December 11, 2010

Such things are much too common to be widely known or cared for. Smart citizens grow rich, and friendless victims smart and die, and are forgotten. That is all.

Quoted on December 11, 2010

Mr. Mould and his men had not exaggerated the grandeur of the arrangements. They were splendid. The four hearse-horses, especially reared and pranced, and showed their highest action, as if they knew a man was dead, and triumphed in it. `They break us, drive us, ride us. ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleasure -- But they die; Hurrah, they die!'

Quoted on December 11, 2010

on American journalism:
"His high-spiced wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess. Nothing would have delighted the colonel more than to be told that no such man as he could walk in high success the streets of any other country in the world: for that would only have been a logical assurance to him of the correct adaptation of his labours to the prevailing taste, and of his being strictly and peculiarly a national feature of America.

Quoted on December 11, 2010

on American slavery:
`Lord love you, sir,' he added, `they're so fond of Liberty in this part of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to market with 'em. They've such a passion for Liberty, that they can't help taking liberties with her. That's what it's owing to.'

Quoted on December 11, 2010

Why, a man with any feeling ought to be ashamed of being eighty, let alone more. Where's his religion, I should like to know, when he goes flying in the face of the Bible like that? Three-score-and-ten's the mark, and no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what's expected of him, has any business to live longer.

Quoted on December 11, 2010