My mind does not easily accept stately historical processions. - Zadie Smith
When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity? - Seneca
Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers. - Michael Dirda
Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure - Francis Bacon