'There is a tide in the affairs of men'-- you know the rest; and you know also that 'tide and time wait for no man.' If you are contented with your two or three hundred a year in the Weights and Measures, God forbid that I should tempt you to higher thoughts--only in that case I have mistaken my man.' 'I must be contented with it, if I can get nothing better,' said Tudor, weakly.
'Exactly; you must be contented--or rather you must put up with it--if you can get nothing better.

That's the meaning of contentment all the world over.

You argue in a circle.

You must be a mere clerk if you cannot do better than other mere clerks.
But the fact of your having such an offer as that I now make you, is proof that you can do better than others; proves, in fact, that you need not be a mere clerk, unless you choose to remain so.' 'Buying these shares might lose me all that I have got, and could not do more than put a hundred pounds or so in my pocket.' 'Gammon--' 'Could I go back and tell Sir Gregory openly that I had bought them ?' 'Why, Tudor, you are the youngest fish I ever met, sent out to swim alone in this wicked world of ours.

Who the deuce talks openly of his speculations?
Will Sir Gregory tell you what shares he buys?
Is not every member of the House, every man in the Government, every barrister, parson, and doctor, that can collect a hundred pounds, are not all of them at the work?
And do they talk openly of the matter?
Does the bishop put it into his charge, or the parson into his sermon ?' 'But they would not be ashamed to tell their friends.' 'Would not they?
Oh! the Rev.Mr.Pickabit, of St.Judas Without, would not be ashamed to tell his bishop! But the long and the short of the thing is this; most men circumstanced as you are have no chance of doing anything good till they are forty or fifty, and then their energies are worn out.