Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty tho...usand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it ...will return to the attack more furious than ever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the fixed that horrifies us, the fixed that assails us with the tremendous force of mindlessness. The fixed is a Mason jar, ...and we can't beat it open. ...The fixed is a world without fire--dead flint, dead tinder, and nowhere a spark. It is motion without direction, force without power, the aimless procession of caterpillars round the rim of a vase, and I hate it because at any moment I myself might step to that charmed and glistening thread.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The blacksmith dropped his hammer, the carpenter his plane, the mason his trowel, the farmer his sickle, the baker his loaf, and t...he tapster his bottle. All were off for the mines, some on horses, some on carts, and some on crutches, and one went in a litter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know, it must have been my imagination, but it makes me realize how desperately alone the Earth is. Hanging in space like a spec...k of food floating in the ocean. Sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by.... Time will tell, Dr. Mason. We can only wait and wonder. Wonder how, wonder when.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am a Wasp only in the genetic sense; the P does not quite apply. As an Episcopalian I am technically an Anglican Catholic, meani...ng that I have a real feel for theological dottiness untainted by deeper questions of religious belief. I have no religious beliefs to speak of, but I stand four-square with the Highs against the Lows on Latin and incense, and I will go to bat for transubstantiation even though it means nothing to me one way or the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, a...nd condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This sense of otherness is the single most pernicious force in American discourse. Its not-like-us ethos makes so much bigotry pos...sible: racism, sexism, homophobia. It divides the country as surely as the Mason-Dixon line once did.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may ventur...e to call himself an architect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »