Frederick Rolfe

Pray for the repose of His soul. He was so tired.

Most people have only half developed their single personalities. That a man should split his into four and more; and should develop each separately and perfectly, was so abnormal that many normals failed to understand it.

That cold white candent voice which was more caustic than silver nitrate and more thrilling than a scream.

An appeal to a goodness which is not in him is, to a vain and sensitive soul, a stinging insult.

He took the imperial hand and shook it in the glad-to-see-you-but-keep-off English fashion.

Brisk and prompt to war, soft and not in the least able to resist calamity, fickle in catching at schemes, and always striving after novelties – French characteristics remained unaltered twenty centuries after Julius Caesar made a note of …

It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.