Servile smudgers of history, prattling about an Emil Ludwig and a Thomas Mann season — meaning the Weimar period — as if it had produced me and as if I had used the Republic for a background!

It is said that the herb Christswoort, or Christmas flower, in plain English Black Helebore, (so called from its springing about this time) helpeth madnesse, distraction, purgeth melancholy and dulnesse. This last expression minds me to caveat the Reader, not to be angry at Helebore because it's called Christmas flowre; for it, poore thing, hurts no body that lets it alone, […] [quoting V. Annand's Mysterium Pietatis, pages 24–25.]

At the top of each is a piece of broken glass embedded in a blop of concrete.

[T]o see himself dethroned, the object of her contempt, was a bitter pill to swallow.