Ambition is only vanity ennobled. - Jerome K. Jerome

...they cursed us - not with a common cursory curse, but with long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced the whole of our career, and went away into the distant future, and included all our relations, and covered everything connected with us - good, substantial curses.

A woman never thoroughly cares for her
lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you have
snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she
begins to smile upon you.

Seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.