E o abade pançudo que à tardinha, à varanda, palita o dente furado saboreando o seu café com um ar paterno, traz dentro em si os indistintos restos d… - José Maria de Eça de Queirós

Human effort may manage at its best to transform a starving proletariat into a well-fed bourgeoisie; but then a worse proletariat emerges from the bowels of society. Jesus was right, there will always be the poor among us. Which proves that this humanity is the greatest error that God ever committed.

A strange people, for whom it is out of the question that anyone can be moral without reading the Bible, and strong without playing cricket, and a gentleman without being English! And it is this that makes them so detested. They never fuse, they never lose their Englishness.

O amor espiritualiza o homem – e materializa a mulher.