But, curiously, though Mr. Norrell was able to work feats of the most breath-taking wonder, he was only able to describe them in his usual dry manner, so that Sit Walter was left with the impression t...
But when the fairy sang the whole world listened to him. Stephen felt clouds pause in their passing; he felt sleeping hills shift and murmur; he felt cold mists dance. He understood for the first time...
And her looks? Is she pretty? asked Strange. The question seemed to embarrass Henry. Miss Watkins is not generally considered one of the first in beauty, no. But then upon further acquaintance, you kn...
After all, he thought, what can a magician do against a lead ball? Between the pistol firing and his heart exploding, there is no time for magic.
… bleak, wind-swept fens and moors; empty fields with broken walls and gates hanging off their hinges; a black, ruined church; an open grave; a suicide buried at a lonely crossroads; a fire of bones b...
You must learn to live as I do - in the face of constant criticism, opposition and censure. That, sir, is the English way.
But he had the natural distrust that a young, rich, self-indulgent man feels for members of the clergy. Who could say what notions of extraordinary virtue and unnecessary self-sacrifice they might be...
To sit and pass hour after hour in idle chatter with a roomful of strangers is to me the worst sort of torment
To Strange’s unnautical eye, it looked very much as if the ship had simply lain down and gone to sleep. He felt that if he had been the Captain he would have spoken to her sternly and made her get up...
They were excessively pleased with the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. They thought the façades of the houses very magnificent – they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay, which buildings...
They had come in secret, having an idea that Dr Greysteel, and perhaps even Mr Strange, might try to prevent them going, or else insist upon accompanying them — and they had no wish for male companion...
There was very little about her face and figure that was in any wayremarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated byconversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovelyd...
There was a tall, sensible man in the room called Thorpe, a gentleman with very little magical learning, but a degree of common sense rare in a magician.
The sky spoke to him.It was a language he had never heard before. He was not even certain there were words. Perhaps it only spoke to him in the black writing the birds made. He was small and unprotect...
The idea of forty precious volumes being taken into a country in a state of war where they might get burnt, blown up, drowned or dusty was almost too horrible to contemplate. Mr Norrell did not know a...
The first ten books Mr. Segundus looked at were worthless — books of sermons and moralizing from the last century, or descriptions of persons whom no one living cared about. The next fifty were very m...
Strange stared thoughtfully at her for several seconds, so that Arabella mistakenly supposed he must be considering what she had just said. But when he spoke it was only to say in a tone of gentle rep...
She spoke the language of the Scottish Highlands (which is like singing).
She spoke Basque, which is a language which rarely makes any impression upon the brains of any other race, so that a man may hear it as often and as long as he likes, but never afterwards be able to r...
My father believed that, in understanding and in knowledge of right and wrong and in many other things, women are men’s equals and I am entirely of his opinion.