“It would be a great honor to any one to be his companion,” said Dorothea, energetically. “You like him, eh?” said Mr. Brooke, without showing any surprise, or other emotion. “Well, now, I’ve known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of him—any ideas, you know. However, he is a tiptop man and may be a bishop—that kind of thing, you know, if Peel stays in. And he has a very high opinion of you, my dear.”
From Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth":
"He [Professor Otto Lidenbrock] was an egotistical scholar, a deep well of scientific knowledge whose pulley screeched when you tried to draw something out of it. In a word, he was a miser."
From JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers":
"There was a time when he [Saruman] was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind."
