If fewer things were despatched, especially in the study of literature, and if more were entrusted to the memory, there would be something to assimilate, and time to assimilate it; there would be less dyspepsia and more muscle. […] It is better that a few of the facts in their heads be wrong, than that no facts be there at all. […] Before his house there stood an oak tree containing a serpent’s nest. […] Nile fled away and hid his head in the desert, and there it still remains concealed. […] But there was a strain of ingratitude and conceit in both father and daughter.