At cost of infinite suffering, we study to love whiskey and cigars, high art and classical music.

In one age we admire Byron and drink sweet champagne: twenty years later it is more fashionable to prefer Shelley, and we like our champagne dry.

At school we are told that Shakespeare is a great poet, and that the Venus di Medici is a fine piece of sculpture; and so for the rest of our lives we go about saying what a great poet we think Shakespeare, and that there is no piece of sculpture, in our opinion, so fine as the Venus di Medici.

If we are Frenchmen we adore our mother; if Englishmen we love dogs and virtue.

We grieve for the death of a near relative twelve months; but for a second cousin we sorrow only three.