He had license to be pompous and veteranlike.
His panting agonies of the past he put out of his sight.
In the present, he declared to himself that it was only the doomed and the damned who roared with sincerity at circumstance.

Few but they ever did it.

A man with a full stomach and the respect of his fellows had no business to scold about anything that he might think to be wrong in the ways of the universe, or even with the ways of society.

Let the unfortunates rail; the others may play marbles.
He did not give a great deal of thought to these battles that lay directly before him.

It was not essential that he should plan his ways in regard to them.