“Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old times, would have been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet.”

“If the attitude of many non-Catholic modern philosophers toward Catholic thought could be summarized in a single sentence, it would be: It has been tried, it has produced its definitive results, which have been found lacking, and now its time is past”

“So watch me strike a match on all my wasted time. As far as I'm concerned you're just another picture to burn.”

“I want this chimney to smoke worse than Lucifer's own fire. Let's add another brick to be certain.Dougal stiffened. He'd thought they were repairing the chimney, but they wanted it to smoke. What in the hell was going on?”

“Ruth puts in all the tiddley bits and the expression and doesn’t mind how many wrong notes she strikes, but with Jane it is accuracy or nothing. I don’t know which Chopin would have hated more,” Eleanor said, folding bread and butter into a thickness that would match her appetite.”

“O SWEET everlasting Voices, be still;Go to the guards of the heavenly foldAnd bid them wander obeying your will,Flame under flame, till Time be no more;Have you not heard that our hearts are old,That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?O sweet everlasting Voices, be still. ”