Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey. - Ouida

Even of death Christianity has made a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan and the stoical repose of the Indian.

What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasants never do argue; they use abuse.

It is the trifles of life that are its bores, after all. Most men can meet ruin calmly, for instance, or laugh when they lie in a ditch with their own knee-joint and their hunter's spine broken over the double post and rails: it is the mud that has choked up your horn just when you wanted to rally the pack; it's the whip who carries you off to a division just when you've sat down to your turbot; it's the ten seconds by which you miss the train; it's the dust that gets in your eyes as you go down to Epsom; it's the pretty little rose note that went by accident to your house instead of your club, and raised a storm from madame; it's the dog that always will run wild into the birds; it's the cook who always will season the white soup wrong—it is these that are the bores of life, and that try the temper of your philosophy.