She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady w… - William Makepeace Thackeray

[As they say in the old legends]Before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him — his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition — no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him — neither name nor money to bequeath — a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “To-morrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.

Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness takes the lead in the world?