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| "Are you a Gypsy fortuneteller, then?" I shook my head. "Merely a stochastic technician, milady." [Robert Silverberg,The Stochastic Man,1975,locate] |
| "Your word is of no value, sir," Christian replied. "Had you been a man of honour things would never have come to this pass." [Charles Nordoff and James Normal Hall,Mutiny on the Bounty,1932,locate] |
| 'Everywhere there are spirits ... They are all around us ... They have driven me from hearth and home, from my wife and children.' [Robert Wiene,Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari,1919,locate] |
| ... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. [Abraham Lincoln,Gettysburg Address,1863,locate] |
| I'm convinced things were better off in the past. Men were men. Women were sex objects. The rest of the world understood: One false move and we'd nuke 'em. [Bruce Feirstein,Real Men Don't Eat Quiche,1982,locate] |
| They broke in upon me and found me doing an unholy thing. [Karl Freund,The Mummy,1932,locate] |
| The clouds swept over the stars again. There were no lights to be seen anywhere. The little Swallow rushed along in the darkness, Susan keeping her close to the wind, facing directly forward and putting the tiller up a little when she felt the hint of cold breath on her left cheek. [Arthur Ransome,Swallows and Amazons,1930,locate] |
| She felt compassionate: charitable: virtuous. Like a dignitary bestowing some supremely precious gift, she handed her panties to the naked Aboriginal. [James Vance Marshall,Walkabout,1959,locate] |
| "I am all alone in this place, and I am waiting to give this jewel to the prudent captain who will leave me in peace." He showed the ruby, glistening in the hollow of his hand like a great drop of blood. [Henry van Dyke,The Story of the Other Wise Man,1895,locate] |
| Then there came a flash of lightning in which the whole scene was clearer than the sharpest thought. By its terrible flicker Tolly saw in the middle of the lawn a tree where no tree should be - a tree shaped roughly like a stooping man, that waved its arms before it and clutched the air with its long fingers. [Lucy M. Boston,The Children of Green Knowe,1954,locate] |
| Little, likewise, did I dream of the curious events which were to follow, or the amazing whirl of adventure into which I was to be so suddenly launched. [William Le Queux,The Red Room,1909,locate] |
| "I do not desire to be interrupted, sir," he added imperiously ; "I am here to speak, and not to listen ; and I have to ask you to hear me with respect, and to obey punctiliously." [Robert Louis Stevenson,New Arabian Nights: The Rajah's Diamond,1882,locate] |
| "Auntie, don't you think for once I'm in luck's way? I believe it's because I bought a swastika at the bazaar, and have worn it ever since, though you told me I was silly to spend my sixpence on it." [Angela Brazil,A Pair of Schoolgirls,1912,locate] |
| "A lie! A lie!" he cried. "Everything in you is a lie. You are hypocrisy, vileness, treason, vice! Everything sordid and repulsive in the world is masked by your smile. Ah! That smile! What an abominable mask! One longs to tear it from you with red-hot pincers. Your smile is death! It is the everlasting damnation of the man who lets himself be charmed by it.... Heavens! What a wretch this woman is." [Maurice Le Blanc,Memoirs of Arséne Lupin,1925,locate] |
| Philip Romilly was accosted, late that afternoon, by two young women whose presence on board he had noticed with a certain amount of disapproval. They were obviously of the chorus-girl type, a fact which they seemed to lack the ambition to conceal. [E. Phillips Oppenheim,The Cinema Murder,1917,locate] |
| He had heard the names of the passions of love and hate pronounced solemnly on the stage and in the pulpit, had found them set forth solemnly in books, and had wondered why his soul was unable to harbour them for any time or to force his lips to utter their names with conviction. [James Joyce,A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,1916,locate] |
| No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. [John Donne,Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII,1624,locate] |
| He spake; and, to confirm his words, out flew Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze Far round illumined Hell. Highly they raged Against the Highest, and fierce with graspèd arms Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heaven. [John Milton,Paradise Lost,1665,locate] |
| I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. [Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,Frankenstein,1817,locate] |
| "I need a lot of help," Merry Ann said, looking fragile and pathetic. Now, I'm the type that even with a broken neck and double, galloping pneumonia would still look healthy, and it's sickening always to stand by and watch the frail ones using their weapons. [Louise Baker,The Boy Next Door,1940,locate] |
| Sir Ben.: Nay, now, Lady Sneerwell, you are severe upon the widow. Come, come, 'tis not that she paints so ill-- but, when she has finished her face, she joins it on so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head's modern, though the trunk's antique! [Richard Sheridan,The School For Scandal,1777,locate] |
| Willy: Just wanna be careful with those girls, Biff, that's all. Don't make any promises. No promises of any kind. Because a girl, y'know, they always believe what you tell 'em, and you're very young, Biff, you're too young to be talking seriously to girls. [Arthur Miller,Death of a Salesman,1949,locate] |
| Rita: My uncle was Dan Joe... He was dyin' and he said to me, "Long ago the white man come with Bibles to talk to my people, who had the land. They talk for hundred years... then we had all the Bibles, an' the white man had our land..." [George Ryga,The Ecstasy of Rita Joe,1970,locate] |
| And at the heart of it all, like the worm in the apple, the beetle in the woodwork, sorcery was working, eating out the pith: soon the apple would break open, the wooden beam fall down, and the lands start up in fear. [Tanith Lee,Night's Master,1978,locate] |
| I am not, of course, promiscuous. With the work I have to do, this would be impossible. [Dorothy Dunnett,Dolly and the Singing Bird,1978,locate] |
| George: It's amazing, the clarity that comes with psychotic jealousy. [P.J. Hogan (director), Ronald Bass (screenplay) ,My Best Friend's Wedding,1997,locate] |
| Now, in the pale lights of the moon that seeps through the half-open door, you stand erect, more beautiful than the serpent that seduced Adam, haughty and lascivious, virgin and prostitute, clad only in your carnal power, because a naked woman is an armed woman. [Umberto Eco (trans William Weaver) ,Foucault's Pendulum,1988,locate] |
| In the folly a candlestick mounted on a horse's hoof rested on page 47 of The Romance of a Soda Cracker. [Edward Gorey,The Other Statue,1968,locate] |
| I only observe this in particular, to show the reason why so much of my time went away with so little work, viz., that what might be a little to be done with help and tools was a vast labour and required a prodigious time to do alone and by hand. [Daniel Defoe,Robinson Crusoe,1719,locate] |
| When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an Attorney's firm. I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee! [W.S. Gilbert,H.M.S. Pinafore,1878,locate] |
| Woyzeck: Yes, Captain, virtue, sir--I haven't got the hang of it, up to now. You see: us common folk, our sort don't have any virtue, we just feel the call of nature; but if I was a gentleman and had a hat and a watch and a frock coat and could talk refined, I'd be virtuous all right. It must be a fine thing, virtue, sir. But I'm a poor man. [Georg Büchner (trans Michael Hamburger) ,Woyzeck,1837,locate] |
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