ly thing called popularity. Will any man suppose it
worth gaining?

*****

Among sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly false upon
the face of them for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject
which is accidentally combined with the error, one of the grossest and
broadest conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the
truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth is
one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly uttered.

*****

For such things as honour and love and faith are not only nobler than
food and drink, but indeed I think that we desire them more, and suffer
more sharply for their absence.

*****

There is a strong feeling in favour of cowardly and prudential proverbs.
The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be
received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same
person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he
should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is
conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from
ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And
since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no
doubt very properly so. But it does not follow that the one sort of
proposition is any less true than the other, or that Icarus is not to
be more praised, and perhaps more envied, than Mr. Samuel Budgett the
successful merchant.

*****

'You know it very well, it cannot in any way help that you should brood
upon it, and I sometimes wonder whether you and I--who are a pair of
sentimentalists--are quite good judges of plain men.'

*****

For, after all, we are vessels of a very limited content. Not all men
can read all books; it is only in a chosen few that any man will find
his appointed food; and the fittest lessons are the most, palatable, and
make themselves welcome to the mind.

*****

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of
police surveillance (such as I have had) or one brutal rejection from an
inn-door change your views upon the subject like a course of lectures.
As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world bowing to
you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air; but once
get under the wheels and you wish society were at the devil. I will give
most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer
them twopence