Bleak House (1853)

This world of ours has its limits too (as Your Highness shall find when you have made the tour of it, and are come to the brink of the void beyond).

His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills, but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on the whole admit Nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its execution on your great county families.

Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about, that she had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that perhaps he had enough, and could dispense with any more.

He is of what is called the old school - a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young.

He must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money.