Only, do not desire, that you may not envy.

Accept humbly what rights of citizenship are accorded to you upon entering.

Discard the passions when you cross the threshold.

To breathe and to swallow merely, are the duties which should prescribe your conduct; or, such is the swollen condition of the animal in this enchanted region, that the spirit of man becomes dangerously beset.
Edward breathed and swallowed, and never went beyond the prescription, save by talking.

No other junior could enter the library, without encountering the scorn of his elders; so he enjoyed the privilege of hearing all the scandal, and his natural cynicism was plentifully fed.
It was more of a school to him than he knew.
These veterans, in their arm-chairs, stripped the bloom from life, and showed it to be bare bones: They took their wisdom for an experience of the past: they were but giving their sensations in the present.