Just a quick cupper is all I have time for.

A great man must keep his heir at his feast like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by life, the presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning. “Make ready to go,” says the successor to your honour; “I am waiting: and I could hold it as well as you.”

All that we have done comes as the result of a certain insistence that since we must work it is better to work intelligently and forehandedly.

How different from the eloquence of your white handkerchiefed whiners—your ring-displaying, faultering, fawning, frothy weavers of pathetic periods—your soft, simpering saints, from whose mouths the religion of the Bible falls diluted and dulcified, like the meretricious moonlight burdens of an Irish melody!