Under Two Flags (1867)

• It is the trifles of life that are its bores, after all. Most men can meet ruin calmly, for instance, or laugh when they lie in a ditch with their own knee-joint and their hunter's spine broken over the double post and rails: it is the mud that has choked up your horn just when you wanted to rally the pack; it's the whip who carries you off to a division just when you've sat down to your turbot; it's the ten seconds by which you miss the train; it's the dust that gets in your eyes as you go down to Epsom; it's the pretty little rose note that went by accident to your house instead of your club, and raised a storm from madame; it's the dog that always will run wild into the birds; it's the cook who always will season the white soup wrong--it is these that are the bores of life, and that try the temper of your philosophy.
  • Chapter I

Two Little Wooden Shoes (1874)

• What use was it to argue with a little idiot like this? Indeed, peasantsnever do argue; they use abuse.
  • Chapter I

• When one has not father, or mother, or brother, and all one's friends have barely bread enough for themselves, life cannot be very easy, nor its crusts very many at any time.
  • Chapter II

• Brussels is a gay little city that lies as bright within its girdle of woodland as any butterfly that rests upon moss.
  • Chapter II