“His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.”

“My mother and I were like two continents moving slowly but inexorably apart; my father, the bridge builder, constantly extending the fragile edifice he had constructed to connect us.”

“Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.”

“It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.”

“His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.”

“This is Masher,' said Feeney. 'His father was a wild boar, his mother was surprised.”