Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.
Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a thimbleful of matter in the shape of knowledge. . . . wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Just because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.
The argument holds no water at all, not even a thimbleful.
Let us then remember the dead-and all wars-gratefully. And let us hope that because of them we may become a touch better, a thimbleful wiser, and a handshake more tolerant of this changing world they did not live to see.