I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.

I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

How good one feels when one is full -- how satisfied with ourselves and with the world! People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.

I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.

Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising catherine wheels in the front garden , and will grow up into a beautiful and respectable young lady. This naturally gives Harris an interest in all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts; they remind him, so he says, of home.