Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?

Coleridge declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumplings, and I confess that I am of the same opinion.

Why are we never quite at ease in the presence of a schoolmaster? Because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours.

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever.

Not many sounds in life, and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door.

The laws of Pluto's kingdom know small difference between king and cobbler, manager and call-boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conterminant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) with the shade of some recently departed candle-snuffer.