The legions of the Wee Free were receding into the mists of Gaeldom.

[…] a rickety verdigrised geyser which would spit two inches of tepid water into the bath and then mulishly stop working."

[N]o religious teacher was ever more opposed than Buddha in his scheme of salvation to every form of postponement and procrastination. He would have his followers take the cash and let the credit go—though the cash in this case is not the immediate pleasure but the immediate peace.

2007, The Venerable Bede started as an oblate at St Paul's, Jarrow, but by the time of his death in 735 was surely the most learned man in Europe. — Tom Shippey, ‘I Lerne Song’, London Review of Books 29:4, p. 19