Just started reading Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby and there are, as always with Dickens, some amusing descriptions.

The opening lines:
“There once lived in a sequestered part of the county Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby, a worthy gentlemen, who taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason: thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love.

“Some ill-conditioned persons, who sneer at life-matrimonial, may perhaps suggest in this place that the good couple would be better likened to two principals in a sparring match, who, when fortune is low and backers scarce, will chivalrously set to, for the mere pleasure of the buffeting;…“

That was in the first chapter, subtitled “Introduces all the rest”

And in the third chapter, we get this:
“This simple family, born and bred in retirement, and wholly unacquainted with what is called the world – a conventional phrase which, being interpreted, signifieth all the rascals in it….”