When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in ...it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A great deal of unnecessary worry is indulged in by theatregoers trying to understand what Bernard Shaw means. They are not satisf...ied to listen to a pleasantly written scene in which three or four clever people say clever things, but they need to purse their lips and scowl a little and debate as to whether Shaw meant the lines to be an attack on monogamy as an institution or a plea for manual training in the public school system.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position... in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly, and, as it were, merrily, he advances ...to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have been required to put roots and shoots and little stems and tendrils together much as their author did, to wander discourage...d and confused as Hansel and Gretel through a dark wood of witches, to strike the hot right way suddenly, but just as suddenly to mire, to drag, to speed, to shout Urreek! to fall asleep, to submit to revelations, certainly to curl a lip, to doubt, unnose a disdainful snort, snick a superior snicker, curse, and then at some point not very pleasantly to realize that the game I'm playing is the game of creation itself, because Tender Buttons is above all a book of kits like those from which harpsichords or paper planes or model bottle boats are fashioned, with intricacy no objection, patience a demand, unreadable plans a pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick; much the greatest proportion being of scantling... and boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When all who had money and leisure Grew rural o'er ices and wines,... All pleasantly toiling for pleasure, All hungrily pining for pines, And making of beautiful speeches, And marring of beautiful shows, And feeding on delicate peaches, And treading on delicate toes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the peculiarities of recent speculation, especially in America, is that ideas are abandoned in virtue of a mere change of f...eeling, without any new evidence or new arguments. We do not nowadays refute our predecessors, we pleasantly bid them good-bye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playfu...l wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »