I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good.

We are so very 'umble.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again.

If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.