Naomi Begg

“The stewards, and then the bailiffs, and then finally the lawyers meet. They wrangle, they agree, and we are to be married in June. It is no little decision for me - for the first time in my life I have my own lands in my own hands as a widow; once I become a wife everything becomes Lord Stanley's property. I have to struggle to reserve what I can from the law that rules that a wife has no rights, and I keep what I can, but I know that I am choosing my master.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Red Queen

“I stood checked for a moment - awe, not fear, fell upon me - and whist I stood, a solemn wind began to blow, the most mournful that ever ear heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries.”
― Thomas de Quincey, Suspira de Profundis, Being a Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-eater

“Without a use this shining woman lived - Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.”
― William Blake, The Book of Thel

“Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, that it 'cannot be remembered'; itself, being a rememberable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos.”
― Thomas de Quincey, Suspira de Profundis, Being a Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium-eater