It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

It's a great comfort to some people to groan over their imaginary ills.

Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.

We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth -- all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark.

'No business before breakfast, Glum!' says the King. 'Breakfast first, business next.'

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.