What is there behind the leading article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle?
—Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde p 1094.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.
—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, c 14 p 128.
—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, c 14 p 128.
Facebook has brought to the forefront of my social life a necessity I seldom considered before selling my soul and signing up two months ago: friend quantity. Sure, we knew that the cool girls reigned in high school, but never before has such an unquestionably accurate popularity meter indicated down to the last individual your worth as a human being (or, at least the precise number of people who thought you were worth the two seconds it takes to 'friend' someone).... I occasionally scold myself for buying into the superficiality of online social networking. But to delete my profile would be to admit defeat, and what would my friends—real and otherwise—think if I gave in? Still, nothing can belie the masochism of logging in daily. A few mouse clicks reveal photos of parties to which I was not invited and wall-to-wall conversations regarding outings that no one bothered to tell me about. Somehow, though, addicted and dead set on avoiding crippling uncoolness, I struggle on with Gatsby-like tenacity. A thousand "friends" is the new American Dream.
—Jennifer DeBerardinis, Not Clicking With the Facebook Crowd. The Washington Post, Monday, July 30, 2007; Page A15
—Jennifer DeBerardinis, Not Clicking With the Facebook Crowd. The Washington Post, Monday, July 30, 2007; Page A15
George MacDonald
She had in the storehouse of her heart a whole harvest of agonies, reaped from the dun fields of the night.
Although the body she now showed might grow up straight and well-shaped and comely to behold, the new body that was growing inside of it, and would come out of it when she died, would be ugly, and crooked this way and that, like an aged hawthorn that has lived hundreds of years exposed upon all sides to salt sea-winds.
Something had to be done, else she would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; until at last they are a hideous sort of lizards.... And so they run about forever looking for their own shadows, that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last there is but one who knows.
Sometimes she would be seized with such delight of heart that she would spread out her arms to the wind, and go rushing up the hill till her breath left her, when she would tumble down in the heather, and lie there till it came back again.
—George MacDonald, The Lost Princess: A Double Story
Although the body she now showed might grow up straight and well-shaped and comely to behold, the new body that was growing inside of it, and would come out of it when she died, would be ugly, and crooked this way and that, like an aged hawthorn that has lived hundreds of years exposed upon all sides to salt sea-winds.
Something had to be done, else she would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; until at last they are a hideous sort of lizards.... And so they run about forever looking for their own shadows, that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last there is but one who knows.
Sometimes she would be seized with such delight of heart that she would spread out her arms to the wind, and go rushing up the hill till her breath left her, when she would tumble down in the heather, and lie there till it came back again.
—George MacDonald, The Lost Princess: A Double Story
Walter C. Smith
All laud we would render; O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.
—Walter C. Smith
’Tis only the splendor of light hideth Thee,
And so let Thy glory, Almighty, impart,
Through Christ in His story, Thy Christ to the heart.
—Walter C. Smith
P. G. Wodehouse
Bertie: Jeeves, I'm sure that nothing is further from your mind, but you know you have a way of saying "Indeed, sir" which gives the impression that it's only a feudal sense of what is fitting which prevents you from substituting the words "Says you."
Jeeves: I'm distressed to hear it, sir.
Bertie: Well, so you should be, Jeeves. Correct it.
Jeeves: Very good, sir.
Bertie: You'll be glad to hear that I have taken steps in the matter of Tuppy and Angela...
Jeeves: Indeed, sir.
Bertie (peevishly): Jeeves.
Jeeves: Sorry, sir.
–P. G. Wodehouse
Jeeves: I'm distressed to hear it, sir.
Bertie: Well, so you should be, Jeeves. Correct it.
Jeeves: Very good, sir.
Bertie: You'll be glad to hear that I have taken steps in the matter of Tuppy and Angela...
Jeeves: Indeed, sir.
Bertie (peevishly): Jeeves.
Jeeves: Sorry, sir.
–P. G. Wodehouse
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