In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out “under orders” from somewhere or another, no one seems to think that there are people who might LIKE to kill their neighbours now and then.

The gipsies were equally unobtrusive over their missing offspring; I don’t suppose in large encampments they really know to a child or two how many they’ve got.

I regard one’s hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one’s private divergences don’t matter.

I wonder why it is that scandal seems so much worse under a roof,” observed Clovis; “I’ve always regarded it as a proof of the superior delicacy of the cat tribe that it conducts most of its scandals above the slates.

Laurence was an artist-chap, just that and nothing more, though you might make it sound more important by calling him an animal painter;.

With due deference to an esteemed lyrical authority one may safely say that a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is anticipating unhappier things.

She was one of those who shape their opinions rather readily from the standpoint of those around them.

For a boy who went out to it from the dulness of some country rectory, from a neighbourhood where a flower show and a cricket match formed the social landmarks of the year, the feeling of exile might not be very crushing, might indeed be lost in the sense of change and adventure.

The English have a proverb, ‘Conscience makes cowboys of us all’.

I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion,′ he resumed presently. ‘They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There’s nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.