“We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.”

“Red is an all-embracing colour,' said the bishop. 'How fortunate that those who despise it in a bonnet revere it in a hat.”

“The Conservative does not despise government. He despises tyranny. This is precisely why the Conservative reveres the Constitution and insists on adherence to it.”

“All strange and terrible events are welcome, but comforts we despise”

“Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.”

“She likes herself, yet others hates / For that which in herself she prizes; And, while she laughs at them, forgets / She is the thing that she despises.”