Real life seems to have no plots.

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

Magnifying a matter is not the way to mend it.

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

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?

The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.

We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.