When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all!

Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it.

A man should have duties outside of himself; without them, he is a mere balloon, inflated with thin egotism and drifting nowhere.

What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man.

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.