I will not say that everything was utterly commonplace, because I doubt if anything can be that, except to utterly commonplace people

Besides that there is something awful in the being surrounded by familiar faces asleep - in the knowledge that those who are dearest to us and to whom we are dearest, are profoundly unconscious of us, in an impassive state, anticipative of that mysterious condition to which we are all tending - the stopped life, the broken treads of yesterday, the deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished but abandoned occupation, are all images of Death.

Her silence would throw me more heavily than the Admirable Crichton could have done in a verbal disputation for a purse of money.

Noises? With that contagion downstairs, I myself have sat in the dismal parlour, listening, until I have heard so many and so strange noises, that thet would have chilled my blood if I had not warmedit by dashing out to make discoveries. Try this is bed, in the dead of night: try this at your own comfortable fire-side, in the life of the night. You can fill any house with noises if you will, until you have a noise for every nerve in your nervous system.