The Various Flavours Of Coffee

I would never have to take employment again. I could travel: I had always wanted to do the Grand Tour, like so many poets and artists before me. I could afford a place in town, and somewhere quiet in the country. I would be able to write, freed from domestic worries.

the Arabs - they’re the fascinating ones: you never know where you are with them. Their judgement is always being clouded by something: religion, or vanity, or pride.’

to compare the floral bouquet of a Yemeni mocca with ‘the rose-petal vapours of a maiden’s breath’. ‘There is no such aroma, Robert. You only wish it to be so,’

How easy it was to confuse attention with affection!

he was a type of man for whom love was indistinguishable from his own interests.

Brewer was a politician: he had known the best way to make his appeal to me.

prodding his great pizzle into her hindquarters.

Give a heathen charity and he remains a heathen, and the charity is soon gone; but only give him a contract of employment and you have pointed him on the road towards eternal life -’

They talked of rousing all London, but never seemed to have enough postage stamps.