Anthony Powell · 793 pages
Rating: (1.1K votes)
“Even the formal measure of the Seasons seemed suspended in the wintry silence.”
“One’s capacity for hearing about ghastly doings lessens with age.”
“In any case the friendships of later life, in contrast wih those negotiated before thirty, are apt to be burdened with reservations, constraints, inhibitions.”
“Within this hollow bed of the stream the whole range of the quarry was out of sight, except for where the just visible peak of an escarpment of spoil shelved up to the horizon's mountainous coagulations of floating cottonwool, a density of white cloud perforated here and there by slowly opening and closing loopholes of the palest blue light.”
“For some reason Canon Fenneau made me feel a little uneasy. His voice might be soft, it was also coercive. He had small eyes, a large loose mouth, the lips thick, a somewhat receding chin. The eyes were the main feature. They were unusual eyes, not only almost unnaturally small, but vague, moist, dreamy, the eyes of a medium. His cherubic side, increased by a long slightly uptilted nose, was a little too good to be true, with eyes like that. In the manner in which he gave you all his attention there was a taste for mastery.”
“But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”
“Her handwriting was curious small sharp little letters with no capitals (who did she think she was, e. e. cummings?).”
“Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”
“They were indeed great rascals, and belonged to that class of people who find things before they are lost.”
“But even though she was attractive, there was something else about her that caught his eye. She was intelligent, he could sense that right away, and confident, too, as if she were able to move through life on her own terms. To him, these were the things that really mattered. Without them, beauty was nothing.”
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