Status Updates From No Name

Captain Wragge: I have shifted from Moral Agriculture to Medical Agriculture. Formerly, I preyed on the public sympathy; now, I prey on the public stomach. Stomach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach – look them both fairly in the face, when you reach the wrong side of fifty, and you will agree with me that they come to much the same thing.

She [Mrs Lecount] twined herself in and out of every weakness in his character, as the frogs and efts twined themselves in and out of the rock-work of her Aquarium. But she made one serious mistake which very clever people in their intercourse with their intellectual inferiors are almost universally apt to commit – she trusted implicitly to the folly of a fool.

"The miserable little creature [Noel Vanstone] luxuriated in his moments of stolen happiness, with a speechless and stealthy delight which was a new sensation to him. The few young girls whom he had met with, [...] had felt a mischievous pleasure in treating him like a quaint little plaything; the strongest impression he could make on their hearts was an impression in which their lap-dogs might have rivalled him."

"The Professor lived long enough to elevate me above the common prejudice against the reptile creation. Properly understood, the reptile creation is beautiful. Properly dissected, the reptile creation is instructive in the last degree.’ She stretched out her little finger, and gently stroked the toad’s back with the tip of it. ‘So refreshing to the touch,’ said Mrs Lecount. ‘So nice and cool this summer weather!’"

Mr Wragge: Swindler. Definition: A moral agriculturist; a man who cultivates the field of human sympathy. I am that moral agriculturist, that cultivating man. Narrow-minded mediocrity, envious of my success in my profession, calls me a Swindler. What of that? The same low tone of mind assails men in other professions in a similar manner – calls great writers, scribblers – great generals, butchers – and so on.

‘I have always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented by modern society is – the enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me an individual Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which gives that highly-favoured personage nine chances out of ten – and grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you will, in every high place there sits an Ass.