He was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader, but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which imprisoned i… - T. H. White

The mustard — pot got up and walked over to his plate on thin silver legs that waddled like the owl’s. Then it uncurled its handles and one handle lifted its lid with exaggerated courtesy while the other helped him to a generous spoonful. ‘Oh, I love the mustard — pot!’ cried the Wart. ‘Wherever did you get it?’ At this the pot beamed all over its face and began to strut a bit, but Merlyn rapped it on the head with a teaspoon, so that it sat down and shut up at once. ‘It is not a bad pot,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Only it is inclined to give itself airs.

Any one war seems rooted in its antecedents.

Outside the window the thin moon stood upright in a deep sky, like the paring of a finger-nail for magic, and against the sky the weather vane of the carrion crow with arrow in mouth pointed it's arrow to the south