Custom naturalizes labour or study.

If you come across a man called Wadster you can be fairly sure that his ancestors were woadsters and dealt in blue dye.

Books and stories have always been my escape route from busy London life. As a child I was often found reading – in a corner at home in Battersea, or in the library, on a bus, or the back of a car, drifting into the lives of others for hours on end, with only the act of turning the page occasionally jolting me back into reality.

all the degrees and effects of fire, as distillation , sublimation , mortification , calcination , solution , descension , dealbation , rubification , and fixation