You can lengthen your days if you do not brood on fatal things--fatal to you; if you do not worry yourself into the grave." I knew that something of this was platitude, and that counsel to such a man must be of a more possible cast, if it is to be followed.

I was aware also that, in nine cases out of ten, worry is not a voluntary or constitutional thing, but springs from some extraneous cause.
He smiled faintly, raised his head a little higher, and said: "Yes, that's just it, I suppose; but then we do not order our own constitutions; and I believe, Doctor, that you must kill a nerve before it ceases to hurt.

One doesn't choose to worry, I think, any more than one chooses to lay bare a nerve." And then his eyes dropped, as if he thought he had already said too much.
Again I studied him, repeating my definitions in my mind.

He was not a drunkard; he might have had no vice, so free was his face from any sign of dissipation or indulgence; but there was suffering, possibly the marks of some endured shame.

The suffering and shadows showed the more because his features were refined enough for a woman.