[O]ur self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the numerator our success: thus,

Such a fraction may be increased as well by diminishing the denominator as by increasing the numerator. To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified; and where disappointment is incessant and the struggle unending, this is what men will always do.

— William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890

[Thomas Chaloner] had a trick sometimes to goe into Westminster hall in a morning in Terme time, and tell some strange story (sham), and would come thither again about 11 or 12 to have the pleasure to heare how it spred; and sometimes it would be altered, with additions, he could scarce knowe it to be his owne.

— John Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1697

My success as a salesman depends on trust: Before I can close a sale with you, you have to trust me. But this requires me to act deliberately in a way that appears sincere. It’s not enough simply to be sincere and hope that you notice this; my best interests are served by actively cultivating this impression. And this kills true sincerity — now I’m self-consciously promoting an appearance.

“If sincerity is a natural and unforced conformity between avowals and actions, then it does not make sense to try to be sincere or to devise strategies for becoming more sincere, both of which require the deliberate attempt to achieve a state that cannot be brought about by calculation,” writes Monmouth College philosopher Guy Oakes. “Their self-consciousness — their knowledge of the circumstances of their role and the conditions required for its performance — rules out the possibility of sincerity. Sincerity produces insincerity.”

(Guy Oakes, “The Sales Process and the Paradoxes of Trust,” Journal of Business Ethics 9:8 [August 1990], 671-679.)

Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to her when she sent for him; and stay with her as long as she would have him, to which he set his hand; then he articled with her that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased, to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world.

— John Selden, Table Talk, 1689

I am told that a certain friend of mine, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, was of an extreme nimbleness, an agility which he could not well control. One day that grave and reverend personage, the Master of his college, happening to meet him, remonstrated with him thus: ‘Mr. Dash, I am sorry to say I never look out of my window but I see you jumping over those railings.’ Mr. Dash was equal to the emergency, for he respectfully replied, ‘And it is a curious fact, sir, that I never leap over those railings without seeing you looking out of that window.’

— Frederick Locker-Lampson, Patchwork, 1879

During the Battle of Waterloo, a cannon shot struck the right leg of Henry Paget, Second Earl of Uxbridge, prompting this quintessentially British exchange:

Uxbridge: By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!

Wellington: By God, sir, so you have!

That may be apocryphal, but the leg went on to a colorful career of its own.

The single most British conversation in the history of human civilization, in my judgment, took place on the Upper Nile in 1899, when starving explorer Ewart Grogan stumbled out of the bush and surprised one Captain Dunn, medical officer of a British exploratory expedition:

Dunn: How do you do?

Grogan: Oh, very fit thanks; how are you? Had any sport?

Dunn: Oh pretty fair, but there is nothing much here. Have a drink? You must be hungry; I’ll hurry on lunch.

“It was not until the two men had almost finished the meal that Dunn thought it excusable to enquire about the identity and provenance of his guest.”