About stories of all kinds
“I feel very strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day of judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird (the last you would… Continue reading “Like starting a stone”
“[T]he besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course...he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public… Continue reading “The importance of his public ends”
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with… Continue reading ‘Blowing in the wind’
We are all, even the best of us, egotists and self-deceivers, and without a little comfortable make-believe to clothe us we should freeze in the outer winds. Richard Hannay in The Three Hostages The Three Hostages by John Buchan, Starbooks Classics, 2013, ebook. This reminds me of the Emperor’s new clothes. While usually the Emperor… Continue reading ‘Even the best of us’
Have you lived always with your heart and half your mind far away?The Children of Húrin The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien Apparently at least half my mind is far away on the regular, but it came back this evening to remind me to post this, quite literally at the eleventh hour. It’s not… Continue reading ‘Have you lived always’
Wamba the Fool is pretty much my favourite character in Ivanhoe. He just gets to put everyone else and their idiocy on blast with complete immunity himself.
Miss Susan. What is algebra exactly; is it those three cornered things?Phoebe. It is x minus y equals z plus y and things like that. And all the time you are saying they are equal, you feel in your heart, why should they be. Quality Street by J. M. Barrie Quality Street, Act II, by… Continue reading ‘Why should they be?’
Therefore, if we built splendid castles... and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of the hearth round which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that… Continue reading ‘Let us take to ourselves no shame’
For the first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet miscellaneous library that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read... were merely a form of anaesthetic... But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that… Continue reading ‘Merely a form of anaesthetic’
One official sent her to another, and the other sent her back again to the first, and so backward and forward; until it appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in evading their duties, instead of performing them. Bleak House by Charles Dickens Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Collector’s… Continue reading ‘And so backward and forward’
Fictitiously Yours 