Best 21 quotes of Robin Jarvis on MyQuotes

I come to call down my destiny - and it is tall and dangerous!

I don't want to be the Starwife!" Ysabelle protested. "It isn't fair!" Her mother wavered; even now, it was not too late. "You must fulfill your destiny," she said at last. "The Starwifeship is already yours. All that remains is for you to bring the amulet and the Starglass together. Once that is done, the power of the heavens will be yours to command. Use it wisely, for the forces locked within the Silver Acorn may be used for good or ill. On your journey, never be parted from it; always wear it about your neck.

I hope that the examples I have given have gone some way towards demonstrating that pedestrian touring in the later 1780s and the 1790s was not a matter of a few 'isolated affairs', but was a practice of rapidly growing popularity among the professional, educated classes, with the texts it generated being consumed and reviewed in the same way as other travel literature: compared, criticised for inaccuracies, assessed for topographical or antiquarian interest, and so on.

...I shall let [Anne] Wallace put the case herself, at what I think is necessary length: 'As travel in general becomes physically easier, faster, and less expensive, more people want and are able to arrive at more destinations with less unpleasant awareness of their travel process. At the same time the availability of an increasing range of options in conveyance, speed, price, and so forth actually encouraged comparisons of these different modes...and so an increasingly positive awareness of process that even permitted semi-nostalgic glances back at the bad old days...Then, too, although local insularity was more and more threatened...people also quite literally became more accustomed to travel and travellers, less fearful of 'foreign' ways, so that they gradually became able to regard travel as an acceptable recreation. Finally, as speeds increased and costs decreased, it simply ceased to be true that the mass of people were confined to that circle of a day's walk: they could afford both the time and the money to travel by various means and for purely recreational purposes...And as walking became a matter of choice, it became a possible positive choice: since the common person need not necessarily be poor. Thus, as awareness of process became regarded as advantageous, 'economic necessity' became only one possible reading (although still sometimes a correct one) in a field of peripatetic meanings that included 'aesthetic choice'.' It sounds a persuasive case. It is certainly possible that something like the shift in consciousness that Wallace describes may have taken place by the 'end' (as conventionally conceived) of the Romantic period, and influenced the spread of pedestrianism in the 1820s and 1830s; even more likely that such a shift was instrumental in shaping the attitudes of Victorian writing in the railway age, and helped generate the apostolic fervour with which writers like Leslie Stephen and Robert Louis Stevenson treated the walking tour. But it fails to account for the rise of pedestrianism as I have narrated it.

I shall not waste any more words on you," she said coldly. "Your mind is too closed to hear them.

Is the Starwife a witch?" asked Firgil. "Is any wise female a witch? Just because they have been blessed by the Green and given strange and beautiful gifts, does not mean they use them for evil purposes.

I walked slowly on, without envying my companions on horseback: for I could sit down upon an inviting spot, climb to the edge of a precipice, or trace a torrent by its sound. I descended at length into the Rheinthal, or Valley of the Rhine; the mountains of Tyrol, which yielded neither in height or in cragginess to those of Appenzel, rising before me. And here I found a remarkable difference: for although the ascending and descending was a work of some labor; yet the variety of the scenes had given me spirits, and I was not sensible of the least fatigue. But in the plain, notwithstanding the scenery was still beautiful and picturesque, I saw at once the whole way stretching before me, and had no room for fresh expectations: I was not therefore displeased when I arrived at Oberried, after a walk of about twelve miles, my coat flung upon my shoulder like a peripatetic by profession. -William Coxe

...moderate social deviance or class non-conformism I have imputed to the first generation of pedestrians. Improved roads, after all, were one of the principal means by which the country was building a national communications network that would underpin the huge commercial and industrial expansion of the nineteenth century; changing the landscape of the country to produce the arterial interconnection of the modern state in place of a geography of more or less self-enclosed local communities; consolidating the administrative structures of the state and facilitating political hegemony over a rapidly growing and potentially unstable population; and promulgating a 'national' culture in the face of regional diversity and independence. With the main roads such powerful instruments of change, the walker's decision to exploit his freedom to resist the imperative of destination and explore instead by lanes, by-roads and fieldpaths, could well be interpreted as an act of denial, flight or dissent vis-a-vis the forces that were ineradicably transforming British society.

Pedestrianism, [William Bingley] claims, is the most 'useful' mode of travel, 'if health and strength are not wanting.' 'To a naturalist, it is evidently so; since, by this means, he is enabled to examine the country as he goes along; and when he sees occasion, he can also strike out of the road, amongst the mountains or morasses, in a manner completely independent of all those obstacles that inevitably attend the bringing of carriages or horses.' Bingley has a specific reason here for valuing the combination of freedom and intimacy with one's surroundings enjoyed by the pedestrian, but his rationale is generalisable to other travellers.

[Robert] Newell's recommendation of walking is also interesting: 'The best way undoubtedly of seeing a country is on foot. It is the safest, and most suited to every variety of road; it will often enable you to take a shorter track, and visit scenes (the finest perhaps) not otherwise accessible; it is healthy, and, with a little practice, easy; it is economical: a pedestrian is content with almost any accommodations; he, of all travellers, wants but little, 'Nor wants that little long'. And last, though not least, it is perfectly independent.' Newell cites independence, as do a number of the 'first generation' of Romantic walkers I have already surveyed; more striking are his commendation of walking as the safest option, which reflects a very altered perception of the security of travel from that which prevailed in the eighteenth century, and his advocacy of the practical and health benefits of pedestrianism, which against suggests its institutionalisation as a form of tourism and its extension to lower reaches of the middle classes.

The moles came bearing their lamps and then the most ancient and magical creature that ever danced beneath the moon was lost in darkness once more.

The most harmful lies and the most hurtful, always contain a grain of truth," he said. "But nevertheless, lies they do remain.

The path of life is strewn with many perils and the folly of knowledge is one of the greatest dangers. Wisdom is a treacherous weapon, little master, for it is sundered from compassion. All too often the end of the journey gains more import than it should and the wise become blind to the road and the method of their passing.

There are many things in this unhappy world we cannot alter. We must learn to live with our lot and find peace with ourselves.

The time had finally come when she would have to accept the full power of the Starwife. No longer could she be just Ysabelle. Now she had a land to govern and all the daunting responsibilities that that entailed. The liberty she had experienced since the night she had escaped from the Ring of Banbha seemed to vanish. She was left stripped of her freedom, and only long years of a lonely reign stretched out before her.

The time is come," he spoke quietly. "Now, when lesser folk would wither, thou must be true to the blood of thine ancestors. Much greatness is bred in thee; accept now this terrible mantle and take a step nearer thy destiny.

Tread not into the fearsome night But pull the covers high, Step not into the wild dark wood For the Hobbers are dancing nigh

We are happy to observe an increasing frequency of these pedestrian tours: to walk, is, beyond all comparison, the most independent and advantageous mode of travelling; Smelfungus and Mundungus may pursue their journey as they please; but it grieves one to see a man of taste at the mercy of a postilion.' For the 'man of taste' to be actively recommended the pedestrian alternative indeed shows that a decisive reversal of educated attitudes has taken place, and within a relatively narrow span of years.

[William] Coxe expresses...both the pedestrian's advantage of complete freedom of movement, and the inspiring effect of the combination of continual change of scene with maximum time for appreciation that characterises the mobile gaze of the pedestrian traveller. If not a peripatetic by profession, Coxe is clearly one by choice.

Woodget glanced into the dim shadows behind the trees. "What you be hiding fer?" he called. "On such a night as this even the greatest may hide and not be ashamed," came the response.

Yours is a true heart, Vespertilio. Beware of it, for it is surely too large for thy chest to contain.