He had theories and axioms as to a man's conduct, and the conduct especially of a man in the Queen's Civil Service, up to which no man but himself could live.

Consequently no one but himself appeared to himself to be true and just in all his dealings.
A quarter of an hour spent over a newspaper was in his eyes a downright robbery.

If he saw a man so employed, he would divide out the total of salary into hourly portions, and tell him to a fraction of how much he was defrauding the public.

If he ate a biscuit in the middle of the day, he did so with his eyes firmly fixed on some document, and he had never been known to be absent from his office after ten or before four.
When Sir Gregory Hardlines declared that Mr.Fidus Neverbend would never set the Thames on fire, he meant to express his opinion that that gentleman was a fool; and that those persons who were responsible for sending Mr.Neverbend on the mission now about to be undertaken, were little better than fools themselves for so sending him.

But Mr.Neverbend was no fool.