William C. Hall

“The doubtful legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of Venn. It troubles few such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted. From the impeachment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch's short way with the scamps of Virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are mockeries of law.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native

“Athena stroked Odysseus with her wand. She shriveled the supple skin on his lithe limbs, stripped the russet curls from his head, covered his body top to toe with the wrinkled hide of an old man and dimmed the fire in his eyes, so shining once. She turned his shirt and cloak into squalid rags, ripped and filthy, smeared with grime and soot. She flung over this the long pelt of a bounding deer, 500 rubbed bare, and gave him a staff and beggar’s sack, torn and tattered, slung from a fraying rope.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds - some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians - may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought each other. There it is. The birth of history in a paragraph.”
― Justin Marozzi, The Way of Herodotus: Travels With the Man Who Invented History

“What shall I tell Mother?” The boy continued. "Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native