"..the King may be conferring a decoration when he pins the man on the cross as much as when he pins the cross on the man."

...And I can with a clear conscience lay it down, as the outcome of all human experience, that there are in this world of ours only two kinds of speakers. There are two public orators and no third. The first is the man who is making a good speech and won't finish. The second is the man who is making a bad speech and can't finish. The latter is the longer.

It does not in the least follow that the speech which seems too long is unworthy of attention; the fault may be in the atmosphere; it may not be so much he is too long for us, but that we are too short for him. It is said that when Thomas Carlyle was asked to say grace or a text of Scripture, he had a cheery way of reading to the company the whole of "The Book of Job." "The Book of Job" is better worth hearing than any modern philosophical conversation in the whole modern philosophical world. It is more philosophical. It is much more witty and humorous. It is, as that word is really meant, much more modern. From it the modern Agnostic may for the first time learn Agnosticism: a sane and a sacred and a manly ignorance. From it the modern Christian may with astonishment learn Christianity, learn, that is, that mystery of suffering may be a strange hounour and not a vulgar punishment: that the King may be conferring a decoration when he pins the man on the cross as much as when he pins the cross on the man. But though "The Book of Job" is assuredly all this and much more, though it is not in the least a dull thing to read or a prosy thing to read, though it is quite as exciting as "The Sign of Four" and much more amusing than "Three Men in a Boat," yet still we may say that we think Carlyle erred in selecting it as a grace. Carlyle's grace, we feel, is not suited to be a preparation for a square meal. We should prefer the square meal as a preparation for the grace.

-February 24, 1906, Illustrated London News