A.E. Coppard

“Humph,' he said, with a disagreeable air, 'the universe does its work very quietly.' (“The Bogey Man”)”

“If he was not exactly a Spartan, he was, you might say, spartanatical. Things happened to you; they were good,or they were bad - and that was the truth about everything.”

“All the best women are married, yes, they are - to all the worst men' There was an infinite slow caress in her tone but she went on rapidly 'So I shall never marry you. How should I marry a kind man, a good man? I am a barbarian, and want a barbarian lover, to crush and scarify me, but you are so tender and I am so crude. When your soft eyes look on me they look on a volcano.”

“Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence.”

“Pedersen was always wooing her. Sometimes he was gracious and kind, but at other times when his failure wearied him he would be cruel and sardonic, with a suggestive tongue whose vice would have scourged her were it not that Marie was impervious, or too deeply inured to mind it. She always grinned at him and fobbed him off with pleasantries, whether he was amorous or acrid.'God Almighty,' he would groan, 'she is not good for me, this Marie. What can I do for her? She is burning me alive and the Skaggerack could not quench me, not all of it. The devil! What can I do with this? Some day I shall smash her across the eyes, yes, across the eyes.'So you see the man really loved her.("The Tiger")”

“Blood is thicker than water, I know, but it's unnatural stuff to drink so much of. (“The Wife Of Ted Wickham”)”

“Mothers are inscrutable beings to their sons, always. ("The Higgler")”

“Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army.”

“Holiness was always something richly dim.”

“O, sir,' murmured Sheila, still on her knees, 'please forgive me.''Forgive you! 0, la, la, la!' cunningly cried the droll, and strutting like an actor. 'Forgiveness is easy, is it not? O, yes, it is nothing. You are a young woman full of pride. O. yes! - but that is nothing. And full of penitence, and that is nothing, too. Pride is nothing, penitence nothing, forgiveness nothing, but even a bargain in farthings must be paid to be made, and I am a plain business man. What costs nothing brings no balm, and you would not like that, you would not like that, now would you?' (“The Bogey Man”)”