“Behind him the hill are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless.”

“Over the green squares of the fields and the low curves of a wood there rose in the distance a grey, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his gaze fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep.”

“once there was a crow, it flew from the field to the hill, from hedge to hedge, and lived its life. then it died and rotted away. -what's the sense in it? there just ISN'T any!”

“He saw the black water and the declining sun and the swan dipping down, its white wings flashing, and slowing and slowing till silver ripples carried it home. It was a scene which seemed the heart of this land. The lowing sun and the one star waking, white wings on a black water, and the smell of rain, and the long lane fading where a voice comes in the falling night.--Ireland, said Scrotes.--Yes, this is Ireland.”

“The past is not a peaceful landscape lying there behind me, a country in which I can stroll wherever I please, and will gradually show me all its secret hills and dales. As I was moving forward, so it was crumbling. Most of the wreckage that can be seen is colourless, distorted, frozen: its meaning escapes me... all that's left is a skeleton. I shall never find my plans again, my hopes and fears - I shall not find myself.”

“To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.”