puts them both in a nutshell. A woman never thoroughly cares for her
lover until he has ceased to care for her; and it is not until you
have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel
that she begins to smile upon you.

But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns.
Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you
with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.

Good people say that it is quite right and proper that it should be
so, and that it proves ambition is wicked.

Bosh! Good people are altogether wrong. (They always are, in my
opinion. We never agree on any single point.) What would the world
do without ambitious people, I should like to know? Why, it would be
as flabby as a Norfolk dumpling. Ambitious people are the leaven
which raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people the
world would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early in
the morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, and
rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain
in bed.

Wrong to be ambitious, forsooth! The men wrong who, with bent back
and sweating brow, cut the smooth road over which humanity marches
forward from generation to generation! Men wrong for using the
talents that their Master has intrusted to them--for toiling while
others play!

Of course they are seeking their reward. Man is not given that