As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.

About this business of being a gentleman: I paid so heavily for the fourteen years of my gentleman's education that I feel entitled, now and then, to get some sort of return.

We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

To recommend a monarchy on account of the prosperity it gives the provinces seems to me like recommending that a man should have liberty to treat his children as slaves, if at the same time he treats his slaves with reasonable consideration.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

I was last in Rome in AD 540 when it was full of Goths and their heavy horses. It has changed a great deal since then.