"One sees a teacher holding up an apple to a gallery of little children,
and saying: 'An apple has a stalk, peel, pulp, core, pips, and juice; it
is odorous and opaque, and is used for making a pleasant drink called
cider.'"

"I sometimes grow impatient of getting old amid a press of occupation
and labour for which, after all, I was not born.... The work I like is
not very compatible with any other. But we are not here to have
facilities found us for doing the work we like, but to make them."

Still, his work as an inspector might have been made more interesting
and less irksome, if he had served under chiefs of more enlightened or
more liberal temper, as may be inferred from some words uttered after
his retirement--

"To Government I owe nothing. But then I have always remembered that,
under our Parliamentary system, the Government probably takes little
interest in such work, whatever it is, as I have been able to do in the
public service, and even perhaps knows nothing at all about it. But we
must take the evil of our system along with the good. Abroad probably a
Minister might have known more about my performances; but then abroad I
doubt whether I should ever have survived to perform them. Under the
strict bureaucratic system abroad, I feel pretty sure that I should have
been dismissed ten times over for the freedom with which on various
occasions I have exposed myself on matters of Religion and Politics. Our
Government here in England takes a large and liberal view about what it
considers a man's private affairs, and so I have been able to survive as
an Inspector for thirty-five years; and to the Government I at least owe
this--to have been allowed to survive."