George Eliot

“ Philip winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports, and he answered almost peevishly,–
"I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour, or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing."
"Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools when they landed a big pike, I can tell you," said Tom, who had never caught anything that was "big" in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch with indignant zeal for the honor of sport. Wakem's son, it was plain, had his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. ”

“ You've only to look well at things, and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time."
"But haven't you been taught anything?" said Tom, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Philip's crooked back might be the source of remarkable faculties. "I thought you'd been to school a long while."
"Yes," said Philip, smiling; "I've been taught Latin and Greek and mathematics, and writing and such things."
"Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do you?" said Tom, lowering his voice confidentially. ”

“ This Wakem was a pale, puny fellow, and it was quite clear he would not be able to play at anything worth speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable manner, and was apparently making one thing after another without any trouble. What was he drawing? Tom was quite warm now, and wanted something new to be going forward. It was certainly more agreeable to have an ill-natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking out of the study window at the rain, and kicking his foot against the washboard in solitude; something would happen every day,–"a quarrel or something" ”

“ But I thrashed all the fellows at Jacob's–that's where I was before I came here. And I beat 'em all at bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr. Stelling would let us go fishing. I could show you how to fish. You could fish, couldn't you? It's only standing, and sitting still, you know. ”