An aspiration is a joy forever, a possession as solid as a landed estate.

It is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel bigger.

There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and welcome.

We fill the slaughterhouses daily with screams of fear and pain.

We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march.

When we have discovered a continent, or crossed a chain of mountains, it is only to find another ocean or another plain upon the further side. . . . O toiling hands of mortals! O wearied feet, travelling ye know not whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun, descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.