“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"..."It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...”

“There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.”

“It will be like a story from the Arabian Nights," he said. "Only an Oriental could have planned it. It does not belong to London fogs.”

“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world," he said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”

“Never thee stop believin' in th' Big Good Thing an' knowin' th' world's full of it - and call it what tha' likes. Tha' wert singin' to it when I come into t' garden.”

“The strong and strange thing—that which moves on its way as do birth and death, and the rising and setting of the sun—had begun to move in them. It was no new and rare thing, but an ancient and common one—as common and ancient as death and birth themselves; and part of the law as they are. As it comes to royal persons to whom one makes obeisance at their mere passing by, as it comes to scullery maids in royal kitchens, and grooms in royal stables, as it comes to ladies-in-waiting and the women who serve them, so it had come to these two who had been drawn near to each other from the opposite sides of the earth, and each started at the touch of it, and withdrew a pace in bewilderment, and some fear.”

“I don't like it, papa," she said. "But then I dare say soldiers - even brave ones - don't really like going into battle.”