“In fact, the only things in the flat Crowley devoted any personal attention to were the houseplants. They were huge, and green, and glorious, with shiny, healthy, lustrous leaves.
This was because, once a week, Crowley went around the flat with a green plastic plant mister spraying the leaves, and talking to the plants....
Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.
What he did was put the fear of God into them.
More precisely, the fear of Crowley.
In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt, or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the plants. "Say goodbye to your friend," he'd say to them. "He just couldn't cut it..."
Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.
The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.”
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“The house had an exuberant chaos to it. Crowded, but nothing like my dads’s. Everything had its place here.”
Source: What Lies in the Woods
“Roads? Who spoke of roads? We go by the moor and the hills, and tread granite and heather as the Druids did before us.”
Source: JAMAICA INN
“Why, you are a man of heart!"
"Sometimes," replied Phileas Fogg, quietly. "When I have the time.”
Source: Around the World in Eighty Days
“I suppose it was obvious that The Loathsome Couple was based on the Moors Murders, which disturbed me very greatly for some reason.”
Source: Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey
“No human being could live in this wasted country, thought Mary, and remain like other people; the very children would be born twisted, like the blackened shrubs of broom, bent by the force of a wind that never ceased, blow as it would from east and west, from north and south. Their minds would be twisted, too, their thoughts evil, dwelling as they must amidst marshland and granite, harsh heather and crumbling stone.”
Source: JAMAICA INN
“Y en el asedio de La Mámora del año 1628, cuando los moros intentaron tomarnos aquella plaza, quienes cavaban las trincheras y dirigían las obras de asedio eran gastadores ingleses. Que a los hijos de puta, como es sabido, Dios los cría y ellos se juntan”
Source: Corsarios de Levante
“—¿En España también tenéis reyes tan baratos e insignificantes como va a resultar este Guido?
Sacudio la cabeza con vehemencia el gallego.
—En España los monarcas pueden ser buenos o malos, piadosos o malvados, pero el que menos ha matado a más de mil sarracenos en los campos de batalla— proclamó orgulloso”
Source: La sombra del rey de Jerusalén
“This particular queen (Margaret of Scotland) had her Moorish maid baptized Elen Moore (a lot of people with the names Moore, Moorer, Morris etc., probably got their names from their Moorish ancestors—for instance, Morrison means son of a Moor.)”
Source: Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap by Verta Mae
“Among the many short cuts to science, we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with difficulty.”
Source: Emile, or On Education