"I can understand why he should feel that the chief obstacle to loving humanity is human nature." "He's dead right, too.

It is so easy to be a philosopher--or a philanthropist--in a desert.

I've felt like that ever since I came home." But the Judge had grown serious, and there was no merriment in his voice when he answered: "I may be wrong, of course, and, thank God, my mind hasn't yet got too stiff with age to change; but I've a reluctant belief deep down in me that this fellow Vetch has got hold of something that is going to count.

I don't pretend to know what it is; an idea, a feeling, merely an undeveloped instinct for truth, or expediency, if you like it better.

Of course it is all crude and raw.