William Paley and Priorities

George Romney, William Paley, National Portrait Gallery, London.

Davy tells in his Salmonia how the Bishop of Durham inquired of the great Dr. Paley “when one of his most important works would be finished, he said with great simplicity and good humour, ‘My Lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly fishing season is over.'”

— George Parker Holden, The Idyll of the Split Bamboo.