A.E. Coppard

“Folly? O, it was indeed! But Folly is a prison where no charter of deliverence ever comes.”

“Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army.”

“If he was not exactly a Spartan, he was, you might say, spartanatical. Things happened to you; they were good,or they were bad - and that was the truth about everything.”

“I am Shiloh, whose box you stole. Your godmother's sickness lies in your own keeping, you can heal her in a moment. Make me your slave, and I must do your will.''You can do this,' Sheila said, 'without my taking a gift from you; you are wise and skilled. O do it, sir, and I will bless your name for ever.''Pooh! what is the good of that?' said he. 'No, I serve a master, the King of Kings, but we are emptiness itself without your mortal alloy. Do as I bid and I will serve you like a queen. And if you fear me you have only to put me to sleep and I shall sleep for seven hundred years.''No,' said the tempted girl slowly, 'not even for godmother can I do this; you are full of evil. Lies, lies! Why do you lie so?' 'O,' Shiloh said, 'because I am weary, and dissimulation is stimulation.' 'I don't understand that.' 'Well, it is so.' He yawned and yawned. 'Besides, I am the Other Side of things. All you think good may be bad, all you think bad may be good.' 'And I don't understand that.' Shiloh replied: 'Strong meat for men and lily buds for maids; did Ajax feed on apples?''I beg your pardon, sir,' said Sheila.”

“Humph,' he said, with a disagreeable air, 'the universe does its work very quietly.' (“The Bogey Man”)”

“O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.''Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' (“The Bogey Man”)”

“Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always. ("The Higgler")”

“A high upland common was this moor, two miles from end to end, and full of furze and bracken. There were no trees and not a house, nothing but a line of telegraph poles following the road, sweeping with rigidity from north to south; nailed upon one of them a small scarlet notice to stonethrowers was prominent as a wound. On so high and wide a region as Shag Moor the wind always blew, or if it did not quite blow there was a cool activity in the air. The furze was always green and growing, and, taking no account of seasons, often golden. Here in summer solitude lounged and snoozed; at other times, as now, it shivered and looked sinister. ("The Higgler")”

“Blood is thicker than water, I know, but it's unnatural stuff to drink so much of. (“The Wife Of Ted Wickham”)”

“Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.' So you see the man really loved her.("The Tiger")”

“To be far from the madding crowd is to be mad indeed.”

“To analyze or assess a person's failings or deficiencies,' he declared to himself, 'is useless, not because such blemishes are immovable, but because they affect the mass of beholders in diverse ways. Different minds perceive utterly variant figures in the same being.”

“The poor wretch, she had given up so much and could yet smile at her trouble. He himself had never surrendered to anything in life - that was what life demanded of you - surrender. For reward it gave you love, this swarthy, skin-deep love that exacted remorseless penalties.”

“Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.”

“No countryman ever speaks to an animal without blaspheming it, although if he be engaged in some solitary work and inspired to music, he invariably sings a hymn in a voice that seems to have some vague association with wood pulp. ”

“All the best women are married, yes, they are - to all the worst men' There was an infinite slow caress in her tone but she went on rapidly 'So I shall never marry you. How should I marry a kind man, a good man? I am a barbarian, and want a barbarian lover, to crush and scarify me, but you are so tender and I am so crude. When your soft eyes look on me they look on a volcano.”

“He asked with a stiff smile 'What is love?'For me,' said Orianda, fumbling for a definition, 'for me it is a compound of anticipation and gratitude. When either of these two ingredients is absent love is dead.”

“Holiness was always something richly dim.”

“There are men who love to gaze with the mind at things that can never be seen, feel at least the throb of a beauty that will never be known and hear over immense, bleak reaches the echo of that which is no celestial music but only their heart's vain cries. ”