“I am certainyou are not one of those dreary fellows one reads of who demands thattheir lady friends be in possession of a maidenhead. Mine was takenby a marrow two years ago.”“A marrow, Miss Pertwee? The vegetable that the Italians call ilzucchine?”“The very same.A most particularly bold and impetuous hot-housemarrow. It was quite the ravishment, I can assure you.”“I consider it no dishonor at all to be preceded by so noble a vegetable.”

“Perhaps if you were to refrain from deploying the phrase ‘ignorantbuffoon’ with a liberality most writers reserve for ‘it’ and ‘the,’you would find a readier audience.”

“A lesser man might have begrudgedhim that, but remembering the old adage, "The finder’s goods shallhe retain / Nor mind the loser’s dreadful pain," I rejoiced, rather, in his goodfortune.”

“Celibacy is the Tesla family secret, passed down through thegenerations.”“Celibacy, passed down through the generations?”Victor asked dryly.I flushed. “Its efficacy is not disproved by its imperfect application,”I muttered.”

“Tesla,” the vicar mused. “That’s a foreign name, is it not? Hungarian,is it?”“Serbian,” I corrected him. “I’m afraid the ——shire Teslas are ascant three centuries in these parts, having constructed Tesla Hall inthe reign of Queen Elizabeth.We are a restless people, and no doubtwill be moving on again any century now.”

“I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.”

“One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”