History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it

Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.

Other people salted away money for their old age, but Nanny preferred to accumulate memories.

It doesn't matter if dragons are flying overhead or whatever - a lot of Victoriana is still cut in the frame of fantasy.

Don't stick your nose where someone can pull it off and eat it.

It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as 'slightly foxed,' although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had beed badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

You can't make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two hundred years ago "Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely available, houses are clean, the world's music and sights and foods can be brought into your home at small cost, traveling even 100 miles is easy, childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don't have to die of dental abscesses and you don't have to do what the squire tells you" they'd think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say "yes."