It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England. - William Makepeace Thackeray

Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it.

And for my part I believe that remorse is the least active of all a man's moral senses — the very easiest to be deadened when wakened, and in some never wakened at all. We grieve at being found out and at the idea of shame or punishment, but the mere sense of wrong makes very few people unhappy in Vanity Fair.

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was brought about by degrees