Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see. - George Gissing

He pronounced his Latin in the new-old way, with Continental vowels. The effect of this on an Englishman's lips is always more or less pedantic, and in his case it was intolerable.

His grey eyes searched her countenance with that horrible intensity of fanaticism which is so like the look of cruelty, of greed, of any passion originating in the baser self.

Yet in Peak's case all appearances are against him — just because he is of low birth, has no means, and wants desperately to get into society. The fellow is a scoundrel; I am convinced of it. Yet his designs may be innocent.