The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it. - Thomas Hardy

The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.

Geoffrey's own heart felt inconveniently large just then.

'Twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o' place.