"I dislike floridity when it is beaten up to cover the lack of something, to take the place of something. I never disliked it when it came from exuberance. Then it isn't floridness, it's merely strong colour."

Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.

St. Peter knew that the poor boy had seasons of desperate unhappiness. His disappointed vanity ate away at his vitals like the Spartan boy's fox, and only the deep lines in his young forehead and the twitching at the corners of his mouth showed that he suffered.

He asked few questions, and his comments were almost entirely limited to the single exclamation, "Oh!" But this, from his lips, could mean a great many things; indifference, sharp interrogation, sympathetic interest, the nervousness of a modest man on hearing disclosures of a delicately personal nature. McGregor, before the others had finished dessert, drew a big cigar from his pocket and lit it at one of the table candles, as the horridest thing he could think of to do.

"That's why I kept quiet. Support can be too able—certainly too fluent."