There is always a piano in an hotel drawing-room, on which, of course, some one of the forlorn ladies is generally employed. I do not suppose that these pianos are, in fact, as a rule, louder and harsher, more violent and less musical, than other instruments of the kind. They seem to be so, but that, I take it, arises from the exceptional mental depression of those who have to listen to them.

No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.

The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade.

It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.

Little bits of things make me do it; — perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; — the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver.

He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not a burden.

Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.