The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated lo...neliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge... with one dash wipes the picture away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by... one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,--a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate... in him;Mnature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and the feldspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good intention clothes itself with sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and shoot out winged fee...t and serve him for a horse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The office ... make[s] its incumbent a repair man behind a dyke. No sooner is one leak plugged than it is necessary to dash over a...nd stop another that has broken out. There is no end to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That is to say, he writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me ...of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm (I was about to write abscess!) of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »