Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice, was a characterising note of Mr Fadge’s periodical; his - George Gissing

Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice.

Both of them are obvious dwellers in the valley of the shadow of books.

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.

To stab the root of a young tree, to hang crushing burdens upon it, to rend off its early branches — that is not the treatment likely to result in growth such as nature purposed. There will come of it a vicious formation, and the principle applies also to the youth of men.