Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of… - Upton Sinclair

We have an arrangement with our bank; the bank does not sell soup, and we do not cash checks.

Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. There is, I discover, a regular propaganda on foot; a long time ago — no man can recall how far back — the Wholesale Pickpockets made the discovery of the ease with which a man's pockets could be rifled while he was preoccupied with spiritual exercises, and they began offering prizes for the best essays in support of the practice. Now their propaganda is everywhere triumphant, and year by year we see an increase in the rewards and emoluments of the prophets and priests of the cult. The ground is covered with stately temples of various designs, all of which I am told are consecrated to Bootstrap-lifting.

He learned that love is not all pleasure, but can be agony and heartache, martyrdom and sacrifice. He learned what the clergyman was talking about in the marriage service: for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.