He's a kind of an aristocrat, his father being a doctor, and you know
what style that is--in England, I mean, because in this country a doctor
ain't so very much, even if he's that.
Hasn't any culture but the artificial culture of books, which adorns but
doesn't really educate.
A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human
liberty.
The exercise of an extraordinary gift is the supremest pleasure in life.
Oh, just to work--that is life! No matter what the work is--that's of no
consequence. Just work itself is bliss when a man's been starving for
it.
What right has Goethe, what right has Arnold, what right has any
dictionary, to define the word Irreverence for me? What their ideals are
is nothing to me. So long as I reverence my own ideals my whole duty is
done, and I commit no profanation if I laugh at theirs. I may scoff at
other people's ideals as much as I want to. It is my right and my
privilege. No man has any right to deny it.
No throne was ever set up by the unhampered vote of a majority of any
nation; and that hence no throne exists that has a right to exist, and no
symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear
any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which
differs from royalty only business-wise--merely as retail differs from
wholesale.