It is one of the consolations of middle aged reformers that the good that they inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all.

Life is full of its disappointments, and I suppose the art of being happy is to disguise them as illusions.

The man is a common murderer. A common murderer, possible, but a very uncommon cook.

There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.

Why are women so fond of raking up the past? They're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after you've ceased to wear it.

On horseback he seemed to require as many hands as a Hindu god, at least four for clutching the reins, and two more for patting the horse soothingly on the neck.

People may say what they like about the decay of Christianity the religious system that produced green Chartreuse can never really die.