Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere)’s Reviews > The Man Who Knew Too Much > Status Update

"That's what makes all this classical landscape gardening so desolate... More desolate than Stonehenge or the Pyramids. ...the eighteenth century gentlemen who built these temples didn't believe in Venus or Mercury any more than we do; that's why the reflection of those pale pillars in the lake is truly only the shadow of a shade."

"I've told a good many lies in my time, too, and perhaps I've got rather sick of them. But there are lies and lies, for all that. Gentlemen used to lie just as schoolboys lie, because they hung together and partly to help one another out. But I'm damned if I can see why we should lie for these cosmopolitan cads who only help themselves. They're not backing us up any more; they're simply crowding us out."

[The clubhouse] "had a billiard room and a bar, and even an excellent reference library for those officers who were so perverse as to take their profession seriously."

"Sir Walter's private secretary seemed more and more threatened with inappropriate slumber" - I do love the phrase "threatened with inappropriate slumber" - I can remember having this problem myself.

Despite the almost aggressive touch of luxury in the fur coat, it soon became apparent that Sir Walter's large leonine head was for use as well as ornament, and he considered the matter soberly and sanely enough.