The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon Grand Tours of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship.
Is Dust immortal then, I ask'd him, so that we may see it blowing through the Centuries? But as Walter gave no Answer I jested with him further to break his Melancholy humour: What is Dust, Master Pyn...
A letter from a French cleric to Nicholas of St. Albans, written c. 1178, rehearsed what was already a familiar perception: Your island is surrounded by water, and not unnaturally its inhabitants are...
London has always provided the landscape for my imagination. It becomes a character - a living being - within each of my books.
…a lie, once uttered, changes reality just as surely as if it were a great truth.
DYER. (Sits down) There was nothing that I recall save that the Sunne was a Round flat shining Disc and the Thunder was a Noise from a Drum or a Pan. VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What a Child is this! (To Dye...
Well,' said Hawksmoor. 'It's a theory and a theory can do no harm.
For who can speak of the Mazes of the Serpent to those who are not lost in them?
It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of...
One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.
Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-wal...
I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been att...
The value is always in the eye of the beholder. What is worthless to one person may be very important to someone else.
But there were four things I taught Walter to consider: 1) That it was Cain who built the first City, 2) That there is a true Science in the World called Scientia Umbrarum which, as to the publick tea...
But didn't you know? Everything is made up.
A woman is a deep Ditch, said he, her House inclines to Death and her Paths unto the Devil
Women, of their nature, crave for liberty; they will not be ordered around like servants.
The bell of Limehouse Church rang as each of them, in this house, drifted into sleep - suddenly once more like children who, exhausted by the day's adventures, fall asleep quickly and carelessly. A so...
For when I trace back the years I have liv'd, gathering them up in my Memory, I see what a chequer'd Work Of Nature my life has been. If I were now to inscribe my own History with its unparalleled Suf...
…sorrow was always the bedfellow of depravity.