The Little White Horse

Humanity can be roughly divided into three sorts of people - those who find comfort in literature, those who find comfort in personal adornment, and those who find comfort in food;

Robin: When you do marry, who will you marry? Maria: I have not quite decided yet, but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London. Robin(yells): What? Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and a pomade in his hair and face like a Cheshire cheese? You dare do such a thing! You - Maria - if you marry a London man I'll wring his neck! (...) I'll not only wring his neck, I'll wring everybody's necks, and I'll go right away out of the valley, over the hills to the town where my father came from, and I won't ever come back here again. So there! (...) Maria: Why don't you want me to marry that London boy? Robin(shouting): Because you are going to marry me. Do you hear, Maria? You are going to marry me.

There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule.

Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.

In my opinion, too much attention to weather makes for instability of character.

...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.

I have known him nearly all my life, and I am going to marry him, so that there won't ever be a time when I shan't know him.

Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?

Give me the benefit of your assistance during those ablutions that neccessarily, though unfortunatly, invariably follow the excercise of the culinary art.

She could only wait. But she was not idle while she waited, because she was holding herself in readiness for whatever it was that she would have to do. She was trying not to be frightened in her mind, and she found that that sort of waiting and thinking really keep a person quite busy.

Are you quite sure that you want to hear it?" he asked. "Sometimes, Maria, a story that one hears starts one off doing things that one would not have had to do if one had not heard it.

...pero no era sólo que rayara el alba, sino que el silencio también se había roto. A lejos, tenue y misterioso, se presentía el ruido del mar.

Por el este, donde estaba el mar y por donde habría de salir el sol, la luz se acercaba con sigilo tratando de internarse en el bosque como una neblina, y a medida que aumentaba la claridad lo hacía también el ruido del mar. De pronto, la luz pareció tomar forma. Dentro de ella había sombras que se movían, constituidas por otra luz aún más brillante. Eran cientos de caballos blancos al galope, con largas y sueltas crines y elegantes cuellos curvados como los de los caballos de ajedrez que había en la sala de estar. Sus cuerpos, que avanzaban a la velocidad de la luz, estaban hechos de una materia más etérea que del arco iris-