“Creff was visibly agitated by the stranger's appearance at our door. Memory calls to mind the anxious wringing of his hands, resembling two furless pink badgers wrestling for each other's throats...”

“Creff, my factotum, interrupted the breakfast he had brought me only a few minutes earlier and announced that a crazed Ethiope was at the door, presumably to buy a watch.”

“...in an area such as this the possibility of violence for the sake of robbery or even mere amusement is always something to be reckoned with. Our little expeditionary party had tried to dress as plainly as possible, but our great-cloaks simply by their cleanliness attracted the sinister attention of the loiterers on the street.”

“I believe it " announced Tafe complacently. "That my dear " said Ambrose "is because you grew up in a rough and violent world here just managing to live from day to day is easily considered a miracle. You are able to accept the truth no matter how astonishing its guise. Whereas our friend Hocker here is steeped in the overweening rationalism of his time and could mentally dismiss a mastodon in front of him if it happened to be wearing the wrong school tie.”

“Adventures, I reflected, are all very fine but a certain amount of civilised comfort forms the true kernel of our desires.”

“I had always thought myself to be a man of moderate passions indistinguishable in that respect from most Englishmen born to our logical and mannered times.”

“That's what you get,' he said, nodding towards a group of the men engaged in some close-order military drill, 'when you give people Bibles and guns. You should give 'em either one or the other, but not both. It just messes up their brains.”