I think I feel on the whole that something's there trying to get out ... It's sort of trying to get out and wants help.

Dear, dear, the miniature world of the family! All the emotions of mankind seem to find a place in it.

Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.

Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

Real life seems to have no plots.