[V]ariety of climate should always go with stability of abode.... an Englishman’s house is not only his castle; it is his fairy castle. Clouds and colours of every varied dawn and eve are perpetually touching and turning it from clay to gold, or from gold to ivory. There is a line of woodland beyond a corner of my garden which is literally different on every one of the three hundred and sixty-five days. Sometimes it seems as near as a hedge, and sometimes as far as a faint and fiery evening cloud.

Well, if I am not drunk, I am mad," replied Syme with perfect calm; "but I trust I can behave like a gentleman in either condition.

...the primary paradox that man is superior to all the things around him and yet is at their mercy.

The human race is always trying this dodge of making everything entirely easy; but the difficulty which it shifts off one thing it shifts to another.

But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticise the Government. Once abolish the God, and the Government becomes the God.

The whole curse of the last century has been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is, the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other. It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of the whole dignity of the mankind. When Man is alive he stands still. It is only when he is dead that he swings.

Let a man walk ten miles steadily on a hot summer's day along a dusty English road, and he will soon discover why beer was invented.