The drawing-room seemed an acre of polished floorboards, with complete units for sitting or lounging — drink-table, settee, arm-chairs — placed at intervals along the walls, by the windows that looked down at river and jungle beyond, in the body of the echoing room.

Man approaches his destiny of the demiurge by biting off one chunkful of insight after another into the nature of things and how they work, and his power and responsibility grows in proportion to the growth of his insight.

I'm not a doctor, but I do play one on TV.

In Cornwall, a singular mode of curing conger, once prevailed, which was, merely to split the conger in halves, and, without any further preparation, to hang them up in a kind of shambles erected for that purpose, when the flies, blowing on the fish, the progeny would devour all the parts liable to decomposition, whilst the residue, being dried in the sun, became in this manner fit for use: and, when perfectly cured, where exported to Spain and Portugal. There they were ground into powder, and with this preparation, the natives of those Countries used to thicken their soups.