An ample theme: the intense interests, passions, and strategy that throb through the commonest lives.

—Thomas Hardy, The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate (London, 1884), p. 158

The most remarkable century ever known in the history of the World, for progress in Education, inventions, Engineering, Electricity, Farming, everything tending to the betterment of the Nation and the Welfare of the People and making life worth living.

—Richard Cook, p. 26, Lincoln Reference Library