When we read Chaucer, we are floated up to him insensibly on the current of our ancestors' lives, […] But the Greeks remain in a fastness of their own.

[Alice:] and I'm sure I ca'n't be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little!

I was reminded of the dour priests and salesmen of the nineteenth century who believed that the plebs wouldn’t be able to handle getting the vote, or a decent wage, or, least of all, leisure, and who backed the seventy-hour workweek as an efficacious instrument in the fight against liquor.

If all life were appraised at the same value there would be a stampede of owners to safetify their shaftway doors, where 85% of all elevator fatalities occur.