Sublime

He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy.

“As the tree falleth, so shall it lie,”

One, at least, of the essentials of it is smallness, smallness in preference to largeness, smallness for smallness’ sake. The merry-maker wants a pleasant parlour, he would not give twopence for a pleasant continent.

“And . . . the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the manners of a pothouse; and . . . and even admitting that he knew he had some of the essentials of a gentleman . . . what was there in that to be proud of? Everyone ought to be a gentleman and more than that . . . and all the same (he remembered) he, too, had done little things . 

that element of the outrageous which is the mother of all adventures sprang up ungovernable,

We must understand this old limitless hilarity and human confidence,

All men are mad but the humorist, who cares for nothing and possesses everything.

But I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath, nor led us into any battle.