“As to animals," said the Count unexpectedly, "whatever one says, I maintain that the rodent family has a certain charm about it.""The rodent family . . . ?" replied the Baron, not getting the drift at all."Rabbits, marmots, squirrels, and the like.""You have pets of that sort, sir?""No, sir, not at all. Too much of an odor. It would be all over the house.""Ah, I see. Very charming, but you wouldn't have them in the house, is that it?" "Well, sir, in the first place, they seem to have been ignored by the poets, d'you see. And what has no place in a poem has no place in my house. That's my family rule.""I see.""No, I don't keep them as pets. But they're such fuzzy, timid little creatures that I can't help thinking there's no more charming animal.""Yes, Count, I quite agree.""Actually, sir, every charming creature, no matter what sort, seems to have a strong odor.""Yes, indeed, sir. I believe one might say so.”

“Jeeves," I said, "those spats.""Yes, sir?""You really dislike them?""Intensely, sir.""You don't think time might induce you to change your views?""No, sir.""All right, then. Very well. Say no more. You may burn them.""Thank you very much, sir. I have already done so. Before breakfast this morning. A quiet grey is far more suitable, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Well, sir, I think it's just as well that they are being phased out of the war effort, and that we are now going to detonate the supernova bomb. In the very short time since we were released from the time envelope-''Get to the point''The robots aren't enjoying it, sir.''what''The war sir, it seems to be getting them down there's a certain world-weariness.''Well, that's all right, they're meant to be helping to destroy it.''yes, well they're finding it difficult, sir. They are afflicted with a certain lassitude. They're just finding it hard to get behind the job. They lack oomph.''What are you trying to say?''Well, I think they're very depressed about something, sir.''What on Krikkit are you talking about?''Well, in a few skirmishes they've recently, it seems that they go into battle, raise their weapons to fire and suddenly think, why bother? What, cosmically speaking, is it all about? And they just seem to get a little tired and a little grim.''And then what do they do?''Er, quadratic equations mostly, sir. Fiendishly difficult ones by all accounts. And then they sulk.''Sulk?''Yes, sir.''Whoever heard of a robot sulking?''I don't know, sir.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir, and I wouldn’t trust me one little inch, sir. I knows a bad one when I sees them. I have a mirror.”

“My blind adoration of Omi was devoid of any element of conscious criticism, and still less did I have anything like a moral viewpoint where he was concern. Whenever I tried to capture the amorphous mass of my adoration within the confines of analysis, it would already have disappeared. If there be such a thing as love that has neither duration nor progress, this was precisely my emotion. The eyes through which I saw Omi were always those of a 'first glance' or, if I may say so, of the 'primeval glance'. It was purely an unconscious attitude on my part, a ceaselesseffort to protect my fourteen-yesr-old purity from the process of erosion.Could this have been love? Grant it to be one form of love, for even though at first glance it seemed to retain its pristine form forever, simply repeating that form over and over again, it too had its own unique sort of debasement and decay. And it was a debasement more evil than that of any normal kind of love. Indeed, of all the kinds of decay in this world, decadent purity is the most malignant.Nevertheless, in my unrequited love for Omi, in this the first love I encountered in life, I seemed like a baby bird keeping its truly innocent animal lusts hidden under its wing. I was being tempted, not by the desire of possession, but simply by unadorned temptation itself.To say the least, while at school, particularly during a boring class, I could not take my eyes off Omi's profile. What more could I have done when I did not know that to love is both to seek and to be sought? For me love was nothing but a dialogue of little riddles, with no answers given. As for my spirit of adoration, I never even imagined it to be a thing that required some sort of answer.”

“No, Mr. Honda, I have forgotten none of the blessings that were mine in the other world. But I fear I have never heard the name Kiyoaki Matsugae. Don’t you suppose, Mr. Honda, that there never was such a person? You seem convinced that there was; but don’t you suppose that there was no such person from the beginning, anywhere? I couldn’t help thinking so as I listened to you.”“Why then do we know each other? And the Ayakuras and the Matsugaes must still have family registers.”“Yes, such documents might solve problems in the other world. But did you really know a person called Kiyoaki? And can you say definitely that the two of us have met before?”“I came here sixty years ago.”“Memory is like a phantom mirror. It sometimes shows things too distant to be seen, and sometimes it shows them as if they were here.”“But if there was no Kiyoaki from the beginning—” Honda was groping through a fog. His meeting here with the Abbess seemed half a dream. He spoke loudly, as if to retrieve the self that receded like traces of breath vanishing from a lacquer tray. “If there was no Kiyoaki, then there was no Isao. There was no Ying Chan, and who knows, perhaps there has been no I.”For the first time there was strength in her eyes.“That too is as it is in each heart.”

“I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family - the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons.""England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons.""Tolerably so, sir.""No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?""Presumably not, sir.""And what sort of a specimen is this one?""I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance.""Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence?""No, sir. I should not care to venture such liberal odds.”