To flatter the proletariat is to fight against all the good that still characterises educated England — against reverence for the beautiful, against … - George Gissing

Only English folk know what is meant by gravy; consequently, the English alone are competent to speak on the question of sauce.

Oftener than not, she still thought of Peak as he appeared some eleven years ago — an evident plebeian, without manners, without a redeeming grace.

Just before them, on the ice, a little troop of ducks was going by, fowl dispossessed of their wonted swimming-ground by the all-hardening frost. Of every two steps the waddlers took, one was a hopeless slip, and the spectacle presented by the unhappy birds in their effort to get along at a good round pace was ludicrous beyond resistance. They sprawled and fell, they staggered up again with indignant wagging of head and tail, they rushed forward only to slip more desperately; now one leg failed them, now the other, now both at once. And all the time they kept up a cackle of annoyance; they looked about them with foolish eyes of amazement and indignation; they wondered, doubtless, what the world was coming to, when an honest duck’s piece of water was suddenly stolen from him, and he was subjected to insult on the top of injury.