“The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning!” — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
“It was as if the future were a treacly adhesive fluid that had been spilt all over the present, so that everything he touched… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
There is not a single homely thing that, looked at from a certain angle, does not become fairy. — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
“And there were ruined castles covered with ivy - the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
“You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share
“Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have read when I was a youngster in some old book... the words have suddenly come back to me. They go like this: We (and then we say our own names), Nathaniel Chanticleer and Ambrose Honeysuckle, swear by the… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share
“The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
“...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait -- a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share
“As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along his thoughts turned to the Farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now. Yes, the Farmer Gibberty had once been a real living man, like himself. And so had millions… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share
“...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
“Besides, there was that foolish feeling of his that reality was not solid, and that facts were only plastic toys; or, rather, that they… — Hope Mirrlees Copy Share Image
