Mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones.

— Hope Mirrlees

Master Nathaniel looked at him. The fixed stare, the slightly-open mouth, the rigid motionless body, fettered by a misery too profound for restlessness — how well he knew the state of mind these things expressed! But there must surely be relief in thus allowing the mood to mold the body's attitude to its own s

— Hope Mirrlees

Poetry and visions, springing as they do from an ever-present sense of mortality, might easily appear morbid to the sturdy common sense of a burgher-class in the making.

— Hope Mirrlees

Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.

— Hope Mirrlees

Sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the slightest influence on action.

— Hope Mirrlees

So fine a medicine is the will to action.

— Hope Mirrlees

The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of color created by the firelight was like the planet Earth - a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows

— Hope Mirrlees

The country people, indeed, did not always clearly distinguish between the Fairies and the dead. They called them both the 'Silent People'; and the Milky Way they thought was the path along which the dead were carried to Fairyland.

— Hope Mirrlees

There had always been something rather brutal about (..._) common sense.

— Hope Mirrlees

The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning!

— Hope Mirrlees