Hope Mirrlees

A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted.

— Hope Mirrlees

“It was as if the future were a treacly adhesive fluid that had been spilt all over the present, so that everything…

— Hope Mirrlees

There is not a single homely thing that, looked at from a certain angle, does not become fairy.

— Hope Mirrlees

“And there were ruined castles covered with ivy - the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the…

— Hope Mirrlees

“You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait…

— Hope Mirrlees

“Stop a minute, Ambrose!" interrupted Master Nathaniel. "I've got a sudden silly whim that we should take an oath I must have…

— Hope Mirrlees

“But it is best to let sleeping facts lie.”

— Hope Mirrlees

“The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice.…

— Hope Mirrlees

“...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a…

— Hope Mirrlees

“As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along his thoughts turned to the Farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this…

— Hope Mirrlees

“...it is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a…

— Hope Mirrlees

“Besides, there was that foolish feeling of his that reality was not solid, and that facts were only plastic toys; or, rather,…

— Hope Mirrlees

“It was not so much a modification of the darkness, as a sigh of relief, a slight relaxing of tension, so that…

— Hope Mirrlees

“What's the use of crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady downstairs? Life has its sad side, and…

— Hope Mirrlees

“Let a thing be but a sort of punctual surprise, like the first cache of violets in March, let it be delicate,…

— Hope Mirrlees

Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy,…

— Hope Mirrlees

In [man's] mouth is ever the bittersweet taste of life and death, unknown to the trees. Without respite he is dragged by…

— Hope Mirrlees

“The country people, indeed, did not always clearly distinguish between the Fairies and the dead. They called them both the 'Silent People';…

— Hope Mirrlees

“Master Nathaniel looked at him. The fixed stare, the slightly-open mouth, the rigid motionless body, fettered by a misery too profound for…

— Hope Mirrlees

“Was it possible that Ranulph, too, was a real person, a person inside whose mind things happened? He had thought that he…

— Hope Mirrlees

“The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created…

— Hope Mirrlees

“And there you sit, gloating over what you have done, as if you were a martyr or a public benefactor -- as…

— Hope Mirrlees

“A class struggling to assert itself, to discover its true shape, which lies hidden, as does the statue in the marble, in…

— Hope Mirrlees

“He says to me, Ranulph, he says... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past…

— Hope Mirrlees

The round towers of the castles looked as if they were so firmly encrusted in the sky that, to get to their…

— Hope Mirrlees