Laudator Temporis Acti

Excerpts from Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (1886):

Chapter VII:

No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues...

Chapter IX:

'So?' said the gentleman in the fine coat: 'are ye of the honest party?' (meaning, Was he a Jacobite? for each side, in these sort of civil broils, takes the name of honesty for its own).

Chapter XIV:

I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.

Chapter XXI:

'To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.'

Chapter XXIV:

'Do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? I thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt than some of yours.'

Chapter XXVIII:

'Now, Mr. David, they talk a great deal of charity and generosity; but in this disputable state of life, I often think the happiest consequences seem to flow when a gentleman consults his lawyer, and takes all the law allows him.'

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Excerpts from Robert Louis Stevenson, Catriona (1892):

Chapter II:

'I'm a lawyer, ye see: fond of my books and my bottle, a good plea, a well-drawn deed, a crack in the Parliament House with other lawyer bodies, and perhaps a turn at the golf on a Saturday at e'en.'

Chapter VII:

Young folk in a company are like to savage animals: they fall upon or scorn a stranger without civility, or I may say, humanity; and I am sure, if I had been among baboons, they would have shown me quite as much of both.

Chapter XI:

'But that's the strange thing about you folk of the college learning: ye're ignorant, and ye cannae see 't. Wae's me for my Greek and Hebrew; but, man, I ken that I dinnae ken them—there's the differ of it.'

Chapter XII:

'A man should aye put his best foot forrit with the womankind; he should aye give them a bit of a story to divert them, the poor lambs! It's what ye should learn to attend to, David; ye should get the principles, it's like a trade.'

Chapter XIV:

'But ye see, in this warld, the way God made it, we cannae just get a'thing that we want.'

Chapter XX:

But I had had my view of that detestable business they call politics—I had seen it from behind, when it is all bones and blackness; and I was cured for life of any temptations to take part in it again.

Conclusion:

For the life of man upon this world of ours is a funny business. They talk of the angels weeping; but I think they must more often be holding their sides as they look on...