Have I so much leisure, or little business of my own, as to look after other men’s matters which concern me not?

I said unto the fools, ‘deal not so madly’

If that severe doom of Synesius be true, “It is a greater offense to steal men’s labours than their clothes,” what shall become of most writers?

Thou may’st be searched for polish’d words and verse
By flippant spouter, emptiest of praters:
Tell him to seek them in some mawkish verse:
My periods are all rough as nutmeg graters.

Mr. Gammon marked the progress of the Earl’s feelings with the greatest interest, perceiving the increasing extent to which respect for him—Gammon—was mingling with his lordship’s sublime self-satisfaction; and, watching his opportunity, struck a spark into the dry tinder of his vain imagination, blew it gently—and saw that it caught, and spread.

…those visitors to forlorn houses, about whom you may not be familiar, who make “strange noises in the night, howl sometimes pitifully, and then laugh again, cause great flame and sudden lights, fling stones, rattle chains,” and if you wake to find your beard shaved and your chin smooth, they will be the impish cause.

At these mysteriously significant symbols, however, Mr. Titmouse, though quite ready to believe that they indicated some just cause or other of family pride, had looked with the same appreciating intelligence which you may fancy you see a chicken displaying, while hesitatingly clapping its foot upon, and quaintly cocking its eye at, a slip of paper lying in a yard, covered over with algebraic characters and calculations.

But he had long been secretly fired with the glory of Hercules, whom he held in the highest esteem, listening with great attention to such as related his achievements, particularly to those that had seen him, conversed with him, and had been witnesses to his prowess. He was affected in the same manner as Themistocles afterwards was, when he declared that the trophies of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep.