Reality

I have kept nothing of what I have said or written.

I had not the least advantage by it or benefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer, and grew mouldy with the damp of the cave in the wet seasons.

How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man!

There is a great difficulty in the way of a writer who attempts to sketch a living Constitution - a Constitution that is in actual work and power.

The object is in constant change.

The most curious point about the Cabinet is that so very little is known about it.

There is always a suggestion of some sort, either the end of a train of thought or a new sensation; and there is an action ensuing, either the movement of a muscle or set of muscles, or the fixing of attention upon something.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.

Man is a part of Nature, not something contrasted with Nature.

It is for us to determine the good life, not for Nature - not even for Nature personified as God.

Give me only the bronze ring which can instantly grant me anything I wish for.

What is to be done? said the Queen.

Atisha! atisha! sneezed the old man, but he did not wake, and the shock made the bronze ring jump out of his mouth.

How are we to face our queen, said the three mice, when by our folly we have lost the talisman and condemned our people to be utterly exterminated?

It is true that this duty is a hard one, and the doubt which comes out of it is often a very bitter thing.

It leaves us bare and powerless where we thought that we were safe and strong.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.

But if the belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence, the pleasure is a stolen one.

That is to hear the better, my child.

That is to eat thee up.