“..(As to what they might be resting upon, Stephen was determined not to consider).”

“And what do you keep in such a pretty little box, sir? Snuff?'Oh, no! It is a great treasure of mine that I wish Lady Pole to wear tonight!' He opened the box and showed Stephen a small, white finger.”

“He did not feel as if he were inside a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire; he felt more as if the rest of the world had fallen away and he and Strange were left alone upon a solitary island or promontory. The idea distressed him a great deal less than one might have supposed. He had never much cared for the world and he bore its loss philosophically.”

“It would need someone very remarkable to recover your name, Stephen, someone of rare perspicacity, with extraordinary talents and incomparable nobility of character. Me, in fact.”

“John Longridge, the cook at Harley-street, had suffered from low spirits for more than thirty years, and he was quick to welcome Stephen as a newcomer to the freemasonry of melancholy.”

“...He danced with a young woman with no hair, but who wore a wig of shining beetles that swarmed and seethed on her head. His third partner complained bitterly whenever Stephen's hand happened to brush her gown; she said it put her gown of its singing; and, when Stephen looked down, he saw that her gown was indeed covered with tiny mouths which opened and sang a little tune in a series of high, errie notes.”

“Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.”