It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

The burden of the incommunicable.

here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.

In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.

Books, we are told, propose to instruct or to amuse. Indeed! A true antithesis to knowledge, in this case, is not pleasure, but power. All that is literature seeks to communicate power; all that is not literature, to communicate knowledge.

It is one of the misfortunes in life that one must read thousands of books only to discover that one need not have read them.

Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.