Status Updates From No Name

"The miserable little creature [Noel Vanstone] luxuriated in his moments of stolen happiness, with a speechless and stealthy delight which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met with, [...] had felt a mischievous pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which their lap-dogs might have rivalled him."

"The Professor lived long enough to elevate me above the common prejudice against the reptile creation. Properly understood, the reptile creation is beautiful. Properly dissected, the reptile creation is instructive in the last degree.’ She stretched out her little finger, and gently stroked the toad’s back with the tip of it. ‘So refreshing to the touch,’ said Mrs Lecount. ‘So nice and cool this summer weather!’"

Mr Wragge: Swindler. Definition: A moral agriculturist; a man who cultivates the field of human sympathy. I am that moral agriculturist, that cultivating man. Narrow-minded mediocrity, envious of my success in my profession, calls me a Swindler. What of that? The same low tone of mind assails men in other professions in a similar manner – calls great writers, scribblers – great generals, butchers – and so on.

‘I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is – the enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me an individual Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which gives that highly-favoured personage nine chances out of ten – and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an Ass.

‘My dear good lady!’ cried Miss Garth, in great amazement; ‘do you really suppose that people fall in love with each other on account of similarities in their characters? In the vast majority of cases, they do just the reverse. Men marry the very last women, and women the very last men, whom their friends would think it possible they could care about.

As a father, he regarded his family of three sons in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books. [...] He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to venture near his books, with a duster in her hand.