More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Childermass was one of that uncomfortable class of men whose birth is lowly and who are destined all their lives to serve their betters, but whose clever brains and quick abilities make them wish for recognition and rewards far beyond their reach. Sometimes, by some strange combination of happy circumstances, these men find their own path to greatness, but more often the thought of what might have been turns them sour; they become unwilling servants and perform their tasks no better – or worse – than their less able fellows. They become insolent, lose their places and end badly.
he is not dead yet and it seems he intends to live for ever to spite them,
The intention of the French was to cruise about the Bay of Biscay looking for British ships to capture or, if they were unable to do that, to prevent the British from doing any thing which they appeared to want to do.
He had shaved himself with no very high degree of skill and here and there on his white face two or three coarse black hairs appeared – rather as if a family of flies had drowned in the milk before the cheese was made and their legs were poking out of it.
Best insult I've read in a while.
“He has not studied the subject at all, but has managed to devise a great many theories about it.
“But as to how the food is conveyed to her,” exclaimed Miss Greysteel, “no one knows for certain. Signor Tosetti believes that her cats carry it up to her.” “Such nonsense!” declared Dr Greysteel. “Whoever heard of cats doing anything useful!”
Who would not blot out the sun sometimes?
Several times I was sorely tempted to blow my brains out – and I would have done it too, but for the recollection of the pleasure it would give my mother-in-law.”
He thought for a moment, before settling upon the most offensive word in his vocabulary. “… democracy.”
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.
