Now it is the sublime victory of a joke that people do not see it.

Humour, my friends, is the one sanctity remaining to mankind.

It is the one thing you are thoroughly afraid of.

Look at that tree." His interlocutors looked vaguely towards a beech that leant out towards them from the ridge of the hill.
"If," said Mr.Quin, "I were to say that you did not see the great truths of science exhibited by that tree, though they stared any man of intellect in the face, what would you think or say?
You would merely regard me as a pedant with some unimportant theory about vegetable cells.

If I were to say that you did not see in that tree the vile mismanagement of local politics, you would dismiss me as a Socialist crank with some particular fad about public parks.