I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

In cases of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the first; we return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs.

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.

But, nevertheless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away, or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum.