“Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.”

“There was a town where everything was forbidden.Now, since the only thing that wasn’t forbidden was the game tip-cat, the town’s subjects used to assemble on meadows behind the town and spend the day there playing tip-cat.And as the laws forbidding things had been introduced one at a time and always with good reason, no one found any cause for complaint or had any trouble getting used to them.Years passed. One day the constables saw that there was no longer any reason why everything should be forbidden and they sent messengers to inform their subjects that they could do whatever they wanted.The messengers went to those places where the subjects were wont to assemble.‘Hear ye, hear ye,’ they announced, ‘nothing is forbidden any more.’The people went on playing tip-cat.‘Understand?’ the messengers insisted. ‘You are free to do what you want.’‘Good,’ replied the subjects. ‘We’re playing tip-cat.’The messengers busily reminded them of the many wonderful and useful occupations they had once engaged in and could now engage in once again. But the subjects wouldn’t listen and just went on playing, stroke after stroke, without even stopping for a breather.Seeing that their efforts were in vain, the messengers went to tell the constables.‘Easy,’ the constables said. ‘Let’s forbid the game of tip-cat.’That was when the people rebelled and killed the lot of them.Then without wasting time, they got back to playing tip-cat.”

“Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of the Gods, without or within us, is mind.”

“But first of all he is a woodsman, and you aren't a woodsman unless you have such a feeling for topography that you can look at the earth and see what it would look like without any woods or covering on it. It's something like the gift all men wish for when they or young-- or old-- of being able to look through a woman's clothes and see her body, possibly even a little of her character.”

“Wearing glasses for reading meant surrendering to old age without the least bit of a fight.”

“She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient.”