The world said of him--the all-knowing, omnipotent world, whom no locks can bar, who has the cat-like propensity of seeing best in the dark--the world said, that better than the books he loved the brandy, and better than books or brandy that which it had been better had he loved less.

But for the world he cared nothing; he smiled blandly in its teeth.

All life is a dream; if wine and philosophy and women keep the dream from becoming a nightmare, so much the better.

It is all they are fit for, all they can be used for.

There was another side to his life and thought; but of that the world knew nothing, and said nothing, as the way of the wise world is.
The stranger looked from beneath his sleepy eyelids at the brown earth that stretched away, beautiful in spite of itself in that June sunshine; looked at the graves, the gables of the farmhouse showing over the stone walls of the camps, at the clownish fellow at his feet, and yawned.