To Lucy it was an admirable study, the contrast between the man who threw his whole soul into a certain aim, which he pursued with a savage intensity, knowing that the end was a dreadful, lonely death; and the man who was making up his mind deliberately to gather what was beautiful in life, and to cultivate its graces as though it were a flower garden.

“And the worst of it is that it will all be the same in a hundred years,” said Dick. “We shall both be forgotten long before then, you with your strenuousness, and I with my folly.”

“And what conclusion do you draw from that?” asked Mrs. Crowley.

“Only that the psychological moment has arrived for a whisky and soda.

Author: W. Somerset Maugham