“I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.”
Thomas Love Peacock book Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle, chapter XVIII.

Crotchet Castle is the sixth novel by Thomas Love Peacock, first published in 1831.As in his earlier novel Headlong Hall, Peacock assembles a group of eccentrics, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations.
“I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.”
Thomas Love Peacock book Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle, chapter XVIII.
“Respectable means rich, and decent means poor. I should die if I heard my family called decent.”
Thomas Love Peacock book Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle, chapter III (1832).
Thomas Love Peacock book Crotchet Castle
Crotchet Castle, chapter IX. Though not named, the author under discussion is clearly Sir Walter Scott.