It Was Embarrassing Now

“…It was embarrassing now to recall with what little

regret he had let slip his pleasures and preoccupations, 

the imminence of loss revealing them for what they were, 

at best only a solace, at worst a trivial squandering of time and energy. 

Now he had to lay hold of them again and believe that

they were important, at least to himself. 

He doubted whether he would ever again 

believe them important to other people.” 

~ P.D. James

A Classic is Like a Cow

“A classic is like a cow: 

it gives fresh milk every morning. 

A classic is a book that rewards endlessly repeated reading. 

A classic is like the morning, like nature herself: 

ever young, ever renewing. 

No, not even like nature, 

for she, like us, is doomed to die. 

Only God is ever young, 

and only the Book he inspired never grows old.” 

~ Peter Kreeft

I Made the Mistake

“I made the mistake of working at the world's largest telescopes

 and now show classic health degradation that is 

associated with that biologically toxic environment.

~ Steven Magee

As A Mistress

“As a mistress, death seemed lacking in many essentials.

 Therefore, I decided not to die.” 

~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

For This Reason

“For this reason the gravest question before

the church is always God Himself, and the most 

portentous fact about any man is not what he 

at a given time may say or do, but what he in

 his deep heart conceives God to be like. 

We tend by a secret law of the soul to 

move toward our mental image of God.” 

~ A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

Rationality is the Way

“Rationality is the way to lead life. So high time,

let’s stop feeding our dreams and shake hands with the reality.”

~ Parul Wadhwa, The Masquerade

I Thought You'd Be Interested

“I thought you'd be interested in these things as a government man. 

Ain't you mixed up in the prices of things we eat or something? 

Ain't that it? 

Making them more costly or something. 

Making the grits cost more and the grunts less?”

~ Ernest Hemingway, To Have and Have Not

Of Course There Must Be Lots of Magic

“Of course there must be lots of magic in the world but people

don't know what it is like or how to make it. 

Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are 

going to happen until you make them happen.” 

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

The Whelp Went Home

“The whelp went home and went to bed. 

If he had had any sense of what he had done that night, 

and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, 

he might have turned short on the road, 

might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, 

might have gone to bed in it for good and all, 

and have curtained his head forever with its filthy waters.” 

~ Charles Dickens, Hard Times

She's Your Lobster

“She's your lobster. C'mon you guys. 

It's a known fact that lobsters fall in love and mate for life. 

You can actually see old lobster couples, 

walking around their tank, you know, holding claws." ...” 

~ Phoebe Buffay

This Compulsion to an Activity

“This compulsion to an activity without respite, 

without variety, without result was so cruel that one day, 

noticing a swelling over his stomach, 

he felt an actual joy in the idea that he had, perhaps, 

a tumor that would prove fatal, 

that he need not concern himself with anything further,

 since it was this malady that was going to govern his life, 

to make a plaything of him, until the not-distant end. 

If indeed, at his period, it often happened that, 

though without admitting it even to himself, he longed for death, 

it was in order to escape not so much from the keenness

 of his sufferings as from the monotony of his struggle.” 

~ Marcel Proust, Swann's Way

i Have Only Known You For a Few Months

“I have only known you for a few months but

I cannot realize that there was ever a time when I did not know you...

when you had not come into my life to bless and hallow it. 

I will always look back to this year as the most wonderful in my life because

it brought you to me... 

My love for you has made my life very rich and

it has kept me from much of harm and evil. 

I owe this all to you, my sweetest teacher.” 

~ Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea (Annotated)

Life Streamed Through Him

“Life streamed through him in splendid flood, glad and rampant, 

until it seemed that it would burst him asunder in sheer ecstasy 

and pour forth generously over the world.” 

~ Jack London. The Call of the Wild/White Fang

I Believe in the Simple Things

“I believe in the simple things--the classic beginning of once upon a time, that good conquers evil in the end, fantasy and fate. My life is that of wondrous enchantment, a place of endless possibilities and dreams, where inspiration is found in the oddest of places. I aspire to inspire, and someday I will change the world,” 

~ Andrew Kendall, The Dark Dictionary: 

A Guide to Hel[ Eradicate Your Darkness, 

Restore Your light, and Redefine Your Life

Morning and Evening

“Morning and evening

Maids heard the goblins cry:

'Come buy our orchard fruits,

Come buy, come buy”

~ Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

One Often Hears of Writers

“One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, 

though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, 

writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography 

expands into placard capitals. Give me a condor's quill! 

Give me Vesuvius' crater for an inkstand! Friends, hold my arms! 

For in the mere act of penning my thoughts of this Leviathan, 

they weary me, and make me faint with their out-reaching 

comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole circle 

of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, 

and mastodons, past, present, and to come, 

with all the revolving panoramas of empire on earth, 

and throughout the whole universe, not excluding its suburbs. 

Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and liberal theme! 

We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, 

you must choose a mighty theme. 

No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, 

though many there be who have tried it.” 

~ Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Black and White

“Black and white isn't just a classic, it's also timeless.” 

~ Anthony T. Hincks

Now the Various Species of Whales

“Now the various species of whales need some sort of

popular comprehensive classification

if only an easy outline one for the present, 

hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent laborers. 

As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, 

I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. 

I promise nothing complete; 

because any human thing supposed to be complete, 

must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. 

I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, 

or - in this place at least - to much of any description. 

My object here is simply to project the draught of

a systematization of cetology. 

I am the architect, not the builder." 

(Moby Dick chap. 32 p. 131)

~ Heman Melville

The Work of the Philosophical Policeman

“The work of the philosophical policeman, "replied the man in blue," 

is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. 

The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; 

we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. 

The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or

a diary that a crime has been committed. 

We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. 

We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that

drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. 

We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, 

and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks

 (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.” 

~ G.K. Chesterton

You Must Come to Lockleigh Again

“You must come to Lockleigh again," said Miss Molyneux, very sweetly, to Isabel, 

ignoring this remark of Isabel's friend. Isabel looked into her quiet eyes a moment, 

and for that moment seemed to see in their grey depths the reflexion 

of everything she had rejected in rejecting Lord Warburton —

the peace, the kindness, the honour, the possessions, 

a deep security, and a great exclusion. 

She kissed Miss Molyneux and then she said: 

"I'm afraid I can never come again.” 

~ Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

Alas, Poor Yorick!

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” 

~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

We Cannot Speak a Loyal Word

“We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly silent, 

we cannot kill and not kill in the same moment; 

but a moment is room wide enough for the loyal and mean desire, 

for the outlash of a murderous thought 

and the sharp backward stroke of repentance.” 

~ George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

God Save King Pendragon

“God save King Pendragon,

May his reign long drag on,

God save the King.

Send him most gorious,

Great and uproarious,

Horrible and hoarious,

God save our King.” 

~ T.H. White White