[Father Roman] had shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter of bullets in his ears.

A tacnode is defined to be a singularity equivalent to the origin in the curve y²-x²=0, that is, the union of two smooth arcs meeting with contact of order two. Similarly, an oscnode is a singularity equivalent to y²-x⁶=0, i.e., consisting of two smooth branched with contact of order three, and so on.

I learned all I need to know from the university of life, not from books.

Up and down the street not a child was to be seen. A sandboy with a donkey cart was the sole human arrangement in it.