The diffidence born of inexperience and of strangeness to London and the Court was wearing away; the desire for another's arm to lean on and another's eyes to see with gave way before a young man's pride in his own arm's strength and the keenness of his own vision.

There was sport afoot; aye, for me in those days all things were sport, even the high disputes of Churches or of Kingdoms.

We look at the world through our own glasses; little as it recks of us, it is to us material and opportunity; there in the dead of night I wove a dream wherein the part of hero was played by Simon Dale, with Kings and Dukes to bow him on and off the stage and Christendom to make an audience.

These dream-doings are brave things: I pity the man who performs none of them; for in them you may achieve without labour, enjoy without expense, triumph without cruelty, aye, and sin mightily and grandly with never a reckoning for it.

Yet do not be a mean villain even in your dreaming, for that sticks to you when you awake.
I had supposed myself alone to be out of bed and Jonah Wall to have slunk off in fear of my anger.