Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

I do detest all offices — all, at least, that are held on a political tenure. And I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.

You are partly crazy, and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is, — though some in less degree, or less perceptibly, than their fellows.

It is a strange experience for a man of pride and feeling to know that his interests are in the control of strangers who don’t like or understand him.