By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments

What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.

There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.

How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June… . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that—for that—I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.