But he answered his father, Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your... command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river?... Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had fathered every folly, every sin. No goat knew gluttony like his, no cat had felt his pride, no crow his avarice. He had sai...d the psalm against envy, the psalm against anger, the psalm against sloth and the loss of hope, but they were no defense.... Without moderation or charity, without relish or enthusiasm, he'd led a wanton, heedless, selfish life. In meanness, in darkness and squalor of spirit, he had passed his time. Faithless he'd professed a faith. Faithlessly, he'd preached.... Even now he made himself a monster, overblew his vices so his charge would lack conviction. Was that not the mark of a monster?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are some things, my dear Fisher, which do not bear much looking into. You undoubtedly have heard of the Siberian goat herder... who tried to discover the true nature of the sun. He stared up at the heavenly body until it made him blind. There are many things of this sort, including love and death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Look you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter.... To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous do...g, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life... is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He was last seen flying to New York. He was handing out cards which read:... "He wears a question in his left eye. He dislikes the police but will associate with them. He will demand something not on the menu. He is invisible to the eyes of beauty and culture...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »