Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit.

Erudition - dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

Convent - a place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.