As if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots.

Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.

How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy! Pendennis. Book ii. Chap. xxxi.

The great quality of Dulness is to be unalterably contented with itself.

To know nothing, or little, is in the nature of some husbands. To hide, in the nature of how many women? Oh, ladies! how many of you have surreptitious milliners' bills? How many of you have gowns and bracelets which you daren't show, or which you wear trembling?--trembling, and coaxing with smiles the husband by your side, who does not know the new velvet gown from the old one, or the new bracelet from last year's, or has any notion that the ragged-looking yellow lace scarf cost forty guineas and that Madame Bobinot is writing dunning letters every week for the money!

Why do they always put mud into coffee on board steamers? Why does the tea generally taste of boiled boots?

Oh, brother wearers of motley, are there not moments when one grows sick of grinning and trembling and the jingling of cap and bells?