“Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.” — William Makepeace Thackeray

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Next to the young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish.

'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.