The village lay in the hollow, and climbed, with very prosaic houses, the other side. Village architecture does not flourish in Scotland. The blue slates and the grey stone are sworn foes to the picturesque; and though I do not, for my own part, disl...
Only an unsatisfied preference is bad. In other words, he argues that although it is good to have fulfilled whatever desires one might have, one is not better off having a fulfilled desire than having no desire at all. By way of example, consider the...
Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thin...
Each day, at the same time, Jude would return and they would be there, led by Webb, whose life could not have been more different than his. Where Webb's memories of childhood were idyllic and earthy, Jude's reeked of indifference. Webb read fantasy; ...
Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?" he asked. "Watson?" "Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant dis...
Do you remember," he said, "one of Holmes's little scores over Watson about the number of steps up to the Baker Street lodging? Poor old Watson had been up and down them a thousand times, but he had never thought of counting them, whereas Holmes had ...
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnif...
Sala called for more drink and Sweep brought four rums, saying they were on the house. We thanked him and sat for another half hour, saying nothing. Down on the waterfront I could hear the slow clang of a ship’s bell as it eased against the pier, a...
Beneath Albright’s office, the colliery sprawled across the hillside, red brick buildings scattered as though hurled from a great height, a hotchpotch of mismatched structures spattered on the valley floor. At the bottom stood the winding house, wh...
Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For the...
I am glad that it is old and big. I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day; and, after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old ti...
[Pommeroy is reading to the class from the 1954 short story "The Destructors" by Graham Greene] Karen Pommeroy: "There would be headlines in the papers. Even the grown-up gangs who ran the betting at the all-in wrestling and the Barrow Boys would hea...
Alonzo Harris: You hear that, homey? You wanna go to jail or you wanna go home? Huh? Crackhead #1: What you think? Alonzo Harris: They got room for you at the booty house, you ever been to the booty house. Big boys have you grab you ankles... Crackhe...
Senator Kelly: I have here a list of names of identified mutants living right here in the United States. Dr. Jean Grey: Senator... Senator Kelly: Here's a girl in Illinois who can walk through walls. Now what's to stop her from walking into a bank va...
Marilyn Lovell: [Jim is standing outside, looking up at the moon, covering and uncovering it with his thumb. Marilyn comes out with a garbage bag] You're drunk, Lovell. Jim Lovell: Yeah, I'm not used to the champagne. Marilyn Lovell: Me neither... [S...
But you didn’t mention Orrigar I, the first king of the House of Chaldarina. He put an end to years of unrest and civil strife. Neither did you mention Ronnick II, the one who reformed the monetary system and forbade the Great Houses to mint their ...
The search began 10 years ago To find a nasty viscous foe They searched in caves and underground But no Bin Laden could be found The President full of seething Calls his Generals to a meeting Have you looked under your noses? Is the question he propo...
Even though I knew, deep down, what she was trying to do, I couldn’t hate her. Even when she hurt me, I forgave her.
I used to love lulling, running water – a sound so infrequent in cityscapes. Its loss always made me feel lonely when I lived amongst concrete.
The door of the judge's house was opened to him by a huge, bearded man who informed the reporter in a conversational tone that if he did not leave the village immediately he would not leave it with his arms unbroken.
I turned to him and he reached for my hand. It would have been easier to walk away. But the wind still blew around us and the house still stood.
