...but there are stories that cannot begin at their beginning, and perhaps this is one of them.

Why had his mother gone to the trouble of bringing him into the world if the most exciting moment in his life was having been made lame by a bayonet?

...the wrath of God pales beside that of man.

Time is a river sweeping away all that is born towards the darkest shore.

There is little more I can add short of dissecting the man, or going into intimate details such as the modest proportions and slight southeasterly curvature of his manhood.

Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of the novel.

Because between doing something and doing nothing, this is all I can do.

And so everything depends on you, Bertie. Bishop or rook. Your life or mine. Do what you believe you have to do.

I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.

All you need to know is this. You can never go wrong by voting for a bill that fails, or against a bill that passes.

Those that know the least of others think the highest of themselves.

I don't spend my hours plotting for somebody else's downfall.

There's no point breaking a lot of crockery unnecessarily.

Mysterious in the light of day, nature retains her veil, despite our clamours: That which she does not willingly display cannot be wrenched from her with levers, screws and hammers.

I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God.

There must be a language that doesn't depend on words.

No one can obtain from the Pope a dispensation for never dying. [Lat., Nemo impetrare potest a papa bullam numquam moriendi.]

Whoever's designing for plus-size doesn't get it. The entire garment needs to be reconceived. You can't just take a size 8 and make it larger.