ESTELLE: Anyhow, you must remember. You must have had reasons for acting as you did. GARCIN: I had. ESTELLE: Well? GARCIN: But were they the real reasons? ESTELLE You’ve a twisted mind, that’s your trouble. Plaguing yourself over such trifles! GARCIN: I’d thought it all out, and I wanted to make a stand. But was [...]
“Ah, Kannegieter, you are not so simple as you make out,” said the Count. “Why? Because, my friend, the aversion to snakes is a sound human instinct, the people who have got it have kept alive. The snake is the deadliest of all the enemies of men, but what, except our own instinct of good [...]
My greatest enemies are Woman and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and love in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the [...]
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people’s, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid. The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern [...]
The sun went, and it was dark. He sat beside her in the comfortable darkness and they listened, contentedly, to the sounds of Africa settling down for the night. A dog barked somewhere; a car engine raced and then died away; there was a touch of wind, warm dusty wind, redolent of thorn trees. He [...]
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Titus, addressing outnumbered Roman soldiers at Tarichaeae, in Palestine: My own feeling is that at this moment my father is on trial, so am I, and so are you. Does he deserve his past triumphs? Do I deserve to be his son, and you to be my soldiers? With him victory is a habit. I [...]
It was a curious thing about Berkeley and Denys,—who were so deeply regretted by their friends in England when they emigrated, and so much beloved and admired in the Colony,—that they should be all the same, outcasts. It was not a society that had thrown them out, and not any place in the whole world [...]
By now all the school-children were coming out of the school, pouring down the road to stop in sight of us and there to cry out in a low soft voice: “Msabu. Are you there? Are you there? Msabu, Msabu.” I sat on a lion and cried back to them: “Yes I am.” Then they [...]
The cousin was a pensive girl with red-brown eyes, she could read Arabic and knew passages of the Koran by heart. She was of a theological turn of mind, and we had many religious discussions and talks about the wonders of the world. From her I learned the true paraphrase of the story of Joseph [...]
The old woman, Farah’s mother-in-law, was, Farah told me, in her own country held in high esteem on account of the excellent education which she had given her daughters. They were there the glass of fashion and the mould of maidenly form. Indeed here were three young women of the most exquisite dignity and demureness; [...]