Read not Milton, for he is dry; nor Shakespeare, for he wrote of common life.

Life is with such all beer and skittles; / They are not difficult to please / About their victuals.

I cannot sing the old songs now! / It is not that I deem them low; / 'Tis that I can't remember how / They go.

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

Eugene Aram, though a thief, a liar, and a murderer, / Yet, being intellectual, was amongst the noblest of mankind.

The boy, a bare-legged beggarly son of a gun.