Oscar Wilde
- The Importance of Being Earnest
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.
Deborah Digges
- Seersucker Suit
Through the racks and the riggings, belt buckles ringing and coins in coat pockets and moths that fly up from the black woolen remnants, his smell like a kiss blown through hallways of cedar, the shape of him locked in his burial clothes, his voice tucked deep in his name, his keys and the bells to his heart, I am passing his light blue seersucker suit with one grass-stained knee, and a white shirt, clean boxers, clean socks, a handkerchief.
Meghan O'Rourke
- Sleep
In the bedroom the moon is a dented spoon, cold, getting colder, so hurry sleep, come creep into bed, let's get it over with; lay me down and close my eyes and tell me whip, tell me winnow tell me sweet tell me skittish tell me No tell me no such thing tell me straw into gold tell me crept into fire tell me lost all my money tell me hoarded, verboten, but promise tomorrow I will be profligate, stepping into the sun like a trophy.
Meghan O'Rourke
- Sleep
Pawnbroker, scavenger, cheapskate, come creeping from your pigeon-filled backrooms, past guns and clocks and locks and cages, past pockets emptied and coins picked from the floor; come sweeping with the rainclouds down the river through the brokenblack windows of factories to avenues where movies whisk through basement projectors and children peel up into the supplejack twilight.
Marianne Boruch
- It includes the butterfly and the rat
But someone will tell you the butterfly's the happy ending of every dirge-singing worm, the rat a river rat come up from a shimmering depth, the shit passed purely into scat one can read for a source, the creature that shadowed it one longish minute. And trees, of course they wanted to fall. It was their time or something equally sonorous. And wind too knows its mindless little whirlpool's not for nothing, not nothing-that pitch and rage stopped. How else does the sparrow's neck break.
Elizabeth Bishop
- One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
Dylan Thomas
- Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Oscar Wilde
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward's studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins... Surely his prayer had not been answered?
Oscar Wilde
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
As he was passing through the library towards the door of his bedroom, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back in surprise, and then went over to it and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-colored silk blinds, the face seemed to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly curious.
Oscare Wilde
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
"How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June... If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this - for this - I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!
Oscar Wilde
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will have its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we did not dare to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!
Edgar Allan Poe
- Fall of the House of Usher
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.
Edgar Allan Poe
- The Cask of Amontillado
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated - I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall; I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-echoed - I aided - I surpassed them in volume and in strength.
Edgar Allan Poe
- The Cask of Amontillado
I had scarcely laid the first tier of the masonry when I discovered that the intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess. It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard the furious vibrations of the chain.
Edgar Allan Poe
- The Cask of Amontillado
The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitely settled - but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.
Edward Sapir
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
Flannery O'connor
- A Stroke of Good Fortune
He was seventy-eight years old and his face looked as if it had mildew on it. In the mornings he studied and in the afternoons he walked up and down the sidewalks, stopping children and asking them questions. Whenever he heard anyone in the hall, he opened his door and looked out.
Henry James
- Washington Square
You would have surprised him if you had told him so, but it is a literal fact that he almost never addressed his daughter save in the ironical form. Whenever he addressed her he gave her pleasure; but she had to cut her pleasure out of the pieces, as it were.
Stephen King
- On Writing
We were evicted from our third-floor apartment when a neighbor spotted my six-year-old brother crawling around on the roof and called the police. I don't know where my mother was when this happened. I don't know where the babysitter of the week was, either. I only know that I was in the bathroom, standing with my bare feet on the heater, watching to see if my brother would fall off the roof or make it back into the bathroom okay. He made it back. He is now fifty-five and living in New Hampshire.
Dylan Thomas
- How Shall My Animal
How shall my animal, whose wizard shape I trace in the cavernous skull, vessel of abscesses and exultation's shell, endure burial under the spelling wall, the invoked, shrouding veil at the cap of the face, who should be furious, drunk as a vineyard snail, flailed like an octopus, roaring, crawling, quarrel with the outside weathers, the natural circle of the discovered skies, draw down to its weird eyes?
