"Yes, perhaps; but I'm not a thief."
"No! But it's more respectable to be a thief than a pauper."
"It is not very comforting to be both—to know that you are one and to feel that you are the other."
"Lyman, that sort of doctrine may suit a long-tailed coat, a white necktie and a countenance pinched by piety, but it doesn't suit me."
"It suits me," Lyman replied. "I was brought up on it. I think mother baked it in with the beans."
"Watercolor nonsense!" said Caruthers. "My people were as honest as anybody, but they didn't teach me to look for the worst of it."
"But didn't they teach you that without a certain moral force there can be no real and lasting achievement?"
Caruthers turned and nodded his head toward the bank. "Is there any moral force over there? Did you notice any saintly precepts on his wall? I don't think you did. But wasn't there many a sign that said, 'get money'?"
"Caruthers, you join with the rest of this town in the belief that McElwin is a great man. I don't. He is a community success, a neighborhood's strong man, but in the hands of the giants who live in the real world he is a weakling."
"He is strong enough, though, not to tremble at the sound of a footstep at the door, and that's exactly what we sit here doing day after day. The joy of the hoped-for client is driven away by the fear of the collector." He was silent for a moment, and then he said: "I don't feel that there's any advantage in being hooked up with a saint."