No varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself.

He was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset

Let me feel now what sharp distress I may.

"Oh!" said my aunt, "I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting."

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money!

And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.

The day was made for laziness, and lying on one's back in green places, and staring at the sky till its brightness forced one to shut one's eyes and go to sleep.