"I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything."

"There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour."

"He was a man who had seen the world, and knew what was what."

"It is a most extraordinary, and at the same time a most natural, thing, that a man should be able to look back upon his life and see it as a whole."

"I have always been a quarter of an hour before my time, and it has made all the difference to my life."