the opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of l'Allegro: even then, he speaks and thinks as becomes Il Penseroso.
It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
Nobody will laugh long who deals much with opium: its pleasures even are of a grave and solemn complexion.
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
