Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He must do it as a sort of ghastly joke.

In a few hours one could cover that incalculable distance; from the winter country and homely neighbours, to the city where the air trembled like a tuning-fork with unimaginable possibilities.

The summer moon hung full in the sky. For the time being it was the great fact of the world.

That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

William Tavener never heeded ominous forecasts in the domestic horizon, and he never looked for a storm until it broke.

One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him.