I have always heard that Italian women are rather fierce.
I do not intend to go, in the space of one hour, from the helplessness of enchantment to another sort of helplessness!
He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all t...
For this is England where a man's neighbours will never suffer him to live entirely bereft of society, let him be as dry and sour-faced as he may.
And such a pinched-looking ruin of a thing now! I shall advice all the good-looking woman of my acquaintance not to die.
And are you married, sir? Mrs Winstanley asked Tom. Oh no, madam! said Tom.Yes, David reminded him. You are, you know.Tom made a motion with his hand to suggest that it was a situation susceptible to...
In peacetime some sort of introduction is generally required to make a person’s acquaintance; in war a small eatable will perform the same office.)
The more apparatus a magician carries about with him — coloured powders, stuffed cats, magical hats and so forth — the greater the fraud you will eventually discover him to be!
Unfortunately, Childermass's French was so strongly accented by his native Yorkshire that Minervois did not understand and asked Strange if Childermass was Dutch.
Then Mr. Norrell roused himself and took down five or six books in a great hurry and opened them up - presumably searching out those passages which were full of advice for magicians who wished to awak...
The backs of their heads were hollowed out; their faces were nothing but thin masks at the front. Within each hollow a candle was burning. This was so plain to him now, that he wondered he had never n...
Such nonsense! declared Dr Greysteel. Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!Except for staring at one in a supercilious manner, said Strange. That has a sort of moral usefulness, I suppose, in m...
Oh! it is an excellent thing, enthused a lady. See how the darkness of the mirror behind the figures sets off Mr Strange’s head. People always imagine that magicians and mirrors go together, complaine...
Lord Wellington is in the Lines. It was a very curious phrase and if Strange had been obliged to hazard a guess at its meaning he believed he would have said it was some sort of slang for being drunk.
Like the hero of a fairy-tale Mr Norrell had discovered that the power to do what he wished had been his own all along.
Let us see, said Saint Oswald. A man in black clothes, with powerful magic and ravens at his command, and the hunting rights of a king. This suggests nothing to you? No apparently it does not. Well, i...
I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The ey...
I have a scholar's love of silence and solitude. To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment.
Fairies do not make a strong distinction between the animate and the inanimate. They believe that stones, doors, trees, fire, clouds and so forth all have souls and desires, and are either masculine o...
Could soldiers read? Mr Norrell did not know. He turned with a look of desperate appeal to Childermass.Childermass shrugged.