The weathercocks on spires and housetops were mysterious with hints of stormy wind, and pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas…. – Charles Dickens
Great men are seldom over-scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire. – Charles Dickens
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress. – Charles Dickens
It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky. – Muriel Spark, Territorial Rights, 1979