What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow.

In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it!

I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent's Circus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting.

It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.

The proverbial Englishman, we know from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness itself.

We drink [to] one another's health and spoil our own.