The Meaning of Night
by Michael Cox
(John Murray, London, 2006)
I am not a murderer by nature, only by temporary design and necessity - a justified sinner.
Page 15.
Night, villainy’s true friend.
Page 16.
Though I had never killed before, I was well used to living on the night-side of things.
Page 33.
Women instantly distrust the unspecific, and their imaginations soon begin to transform hints and suggestions into solid fact.
Page 34.
The boundaries of this world are forever shifting - from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another?
Page 53.
The revelation galvanized me.
Page 55.
London lay behind me, beneath a louring and obscuring red-yellow pall interposed between earth and sky, the progeny of a million chimneys.
Page 55.
It was at least widely acknowledged that he had married for love, which is a noble thing for a man of ambition and limited personal means to do.
Page 83.
Love is its own justification, and of course is irresistible.
Page 83.
She insinuated herself into all the doings of the household with such tact, combined with effortless charm, that no one appeared in the least affronted b what otherwise might have been seen as rank impudence.
Page 91.
His acquaintances were many, his friends few.
Page 93.
Neighbours should be neighbourly.
Page 107.
Once you get into the habit of secrecy, it becomes harder and harder to break it - even for your closest friend.
Page 118.
There must be an end to all pleasure, and soon the nagging apprehension that I must soon settle on a way to earn my living began to intrude most unwelcomingly on my days and nights.
Page 138.
Riddle me this: the mother I had loved was not my mother; my real mother had abandoned me; and yet is seemed that both had loved me. Whose child, then, was I?
Page 155.
I would put on whatever pseudonym suited my present purposes. My whole life would be a disguise, a daily change of dress and character. I would inhabit a costumed world, entering now as one character, now as another, as circumstance demanded.
Page 161.
I do not know what I felt as I regarded the creeping desolation, whether grief for what had been lost, or guilty sorrow for having abandoned my childhood home.
Pages 177-178.
To the inevitability of change, all things must submit; and so I turned my back on the past and set my face into the east wind, which quickly dried my tears.
Page 178.
An advantage, however small, is everything to the resourceful man.
Page 179.
He invited me back over to the cabinet, unlocked the doors again, and we spent a pleasant hour or so admiring together the gems of venereal literature that he had collected over the course of some twenty years.
Page 190.
Possibly, it is beyond human art to convey the sense of something lost, but eternally present.
Page 205.
What has been taken from us will one day be restored by a loving providence.
Page 214.
In appearance, he was a series of rounds. A round face, from which sprouted a closely clipped black-and-silver beard, like a well-kept lawn; large round eyes behind round spectacles; round ears, a perfectly round button nose above a cherubic round mouth, all set upon a small round body - not corpulent, simply round. You instantly saw a natural disposition towards goodness, his roundness seeming appropriately indicative of a corresponding completeness of character: that enviable, unaffected integration of feeling and temperament in which there is excess neither of preening self-regard nor impatience with the failings of others.
Page 244.
Though I went to church dutifully throughout my childhood, I had retained little of what is generally called religion, except for a visceral conviction that our lives are controlled by some universal mechanism that is greater than ourselves. Perhaps that was what others call God. Perhaps not.
Page 268.
It was the bibliophilic temperament, you see; its possessors constitute a kind of freemasonry, ever disposed to treat those blessed with a similar passion for books as if they were blood brothers.
Page 270.
The desired privacy proclaimed by a deliberately closed door I can respect; but not if it is half open. That, for me, is an invitation that I will always accept.
Page 272.
You have seen the worst of me in these confessions. \here, then, let me throw into the opposite side of the balance, what I truly believe is the best of me: my devotion to the mental life, to those truly divine faculties of intellect and imagination which, when exercised to the utmost, can make gods of us all.
Page 292.
I prefer to believe that I was predestined for grace. It accords far more closely to my own estimation of myself, and of course it relieves one of the tedious necessity of always having to do good.
Page 307.
In my professional work I always like to cultivate servants.
Page 323.
Whoever heeds the voice of reason when love whispers, softly persuasive, in the other ear?
Page 328.
I loved her because it was my fate to do so.
Page 338.
Whores, every one of them, of course, but a sweeter, kinder, and livelier bunch of girls you could not wish to meet.
Page.366.
It was my fate, it seemed, wilfully to cast this treasure from me.
Page 367.
Everything contributed t a bitter sense of the futility of the mortal condition. All was black, black, black, like the smoke-black angry sky above.
Page 375.
The prosecution of one’s duty to an employer or benefactor being, to my mind a cardinal virtue.
Page 402.
A man, I thought, is never more himself than when he thinks he is alone.
Page 420.
Our knowledge doth but show us our ignorance.
Page 427.
You live by your wits - I am sure I am right to say this - and this gives you, if I may say so, a kind of feral character.
Page 434.
A hint of mystery in a person is always an advantageous characteristic.
Page 434.
Friends are allowed to be a little presumptuous.
Page 450.
When secrets are finally unlocked, there are always consequences.
Page 471.
Beyond London-bridge it was as if a dark curtain had been brought down across the port of the capital: not a single mast of the many ships moored there could be seen. Elsewhere, too, the drifting haze rendered every detail smudged, indefinite, and dreamlike.
Page 485.
She would not break off the embrace Like some mighty onrush of water, irreversible - and immense, she broke against me, battered me, submerged me, until, as if I were a drowning man, my life seemed to pass before my eyes and I offered myself up to sweet oblivion.
Page 488.
The dead must take care of themselves.
Page 491.
When a passionate nature is thwarted in its desires, the consequences can be extreme.
Page 494.
Faith and friendship are never truly tried except in extremes.
Page 509.
The subdued throb of the great city surges all around, though nothing can be seen but dim human shapes, appearing out of the gloom and immediately disappearing into it, like shuffling phantoms, their faces illuminated momentarily by the smoky flare of the link-boys’ torches, or by the feeble light of gas-lamps in houses and shop windows.
Page 521.
There is little in this world that may not be mastered with study and application; and murder is perhaps the least of challenges, if the injury be great enough, and the will sufficient.
Page 544.
Love makes slaves of us all.
Page 571.
All fear of danger, all apprehension of discovery, all confusion of purpose, all doubt, had fallen away.
Page 578.
I had taken my revenge, and he had paid the price that I had set for the many injuries he had done to me; but I felt scant comfort, and not a trace of elation, only the dull sense of a duty done.
Page 579.
At the door, I looked bac as the blaze took hold, a crackling furnace, consuming hope and happiness.
Page 582.
I killed him; but in doing so, I killed the best part of myself.
Page 590.
We should not strive against what we cannot mend.
Page 590.