Scythrop did not despair. ‘Seven copies,’ he thought, ‘have been sold. Seven is a mystical number, and the omen is good. Let me find the seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they shall be the seven golden candle-sticks with which I will illuminate the world.’
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
There are various ways of getting at secrets. The most approved methods, as recommended both theoretically and practically in philosophical novels, are eavesdropping at key-holes, picking the locks of chests and desks, peeping into letters, steaming wafers, and insinuating hot wire under sealing wax; none of which methods I hold it lawful to practise.
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
it is the fashion to be unhappy. To have a reason for being so would be exceedingly common-place: to be so without any is the province of genius: the art of being miserable for misery’s sake, has been brought to great perfection in our days
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion, and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, and assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love—all prove the accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system; and it is not impossible that the infernal interruption of this fall downstairs may throw a colour of evil on the whole of my future existence.
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
He slept with Horrid Mysteries under his pillow, and dreamed of venerable eleutherarchs and ghastly confederates holding midnight conventions in subterranean caves.
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library], Internet Archive]
He built many castles in the air, and peopled them with secret tribunals, and bands of illuminati, who were always the imaginary instruments of his projected regeneration of the human species.
Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey [Amazon, Bookshop, Local Library, Internet Archive]
