Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to e...ffect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.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 »
It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an ani...mal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)... Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »