“(John Bold said): If an action is the right one, personal feelings must not be allowed to interfere. Of course I greatly like Mr Harding, but that is no reason for failing in my duty to those old men.”

“He was one of those men who, as in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very old.”

“I like to have a plan," said Mr. Palliser. "And so do I," said his wife,--"if only for the sake of not keeping it.”

“What had passed between Eleanor Harding and Mary Bold need not be told. It is indeed a matter of thankfulness that neither the historian nor the novelist hears all that is said by their heroes or heroines, or how would three volumes or twenty suffice!”

“He's a very handsome man, is the captain," said Jeaneatte. . ."You shouldn't think about handsome men, child," said Mrs. Greenow."And I'm sure I don't," said Jeanette. "Not more than anybody else; but if a man is handsome, ma'am, why, it stands to reason that he is handsome.”

“I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.”

“And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from the principles of story telling to which you probably have become accustomed and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, -- so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being, or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest, -- should you choose to go on with my chronicle, -- simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, -- before Mrs. Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle. You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the kind of interest of which I am speaking – and of which I intend to deprive myself, -- is not the most natural and the most efficacious. What would the ‘Black Dwarf’ be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet? – or ‘The Pirate,’ if all the truth about Norna of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefore, put the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph, -- in the next half-dozen words. Mr and Mrs Peacocke were not man and wife.”