So do flux and reflux — the rhythm of change — alternate and persist in everything under the sky. - Thomas Hardy

I was born bad, and I have lived bad, and I shall die bad in all probability.

"I am sorry to shock you," she said. "But the moth eats the garment somewhat in five-and thirty years."

He had just reached the time of life at which 'young' is ceasing to be the prefix of 'man' in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine life, for his intellect and emotions were clearly separate; he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the state wherin they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family.In short he was twenty-eight and a bachelor.