The history of its accumulation was ever present to mar the pleasure of its possession.

I do not mean that I suspected what by the world's convention is deemed dishonesty--of that there had been no necessity--but simply that the heartless and estranged existence, the waste of energies, the blunted charities, and the isolated and distrustful habits of my father appeared to me to be but poorly requited by the joyless ownership of its millions.

I would have given largely to be directed in such a way as while escaping the wastefulness of the shoals of Scylla I might in my own case steer clear of the miserly rocks of Charybdis.
When I drove from between the smoky lines of the London houses into the green fields and amid the blossoming hedges, this earth looked beautiful and as if it were made to be loved.

I saw in it the workmanship of a divine and beneficent Creator, and it was not difficult to persuade myself that he who dwelt in the confusion of a town in order to transfer gold from the pocket of his neighbor to his own had mistaken the objects of his being.

My poor ancestor who had never quitted London stood before me with his dying regrets; and my first resolution was to live in open communion with my kind.