The sum of their faults was their inability to earn money; but, indeed, that inability does not call for unmingled disdain. - George Gissing

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others — the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment.

Mr Biffen,’ wrote another, ‘seems not to understand that a work of art must before everything else afford amusement.

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.