Louis was often struck by Gage's speech, not because it was cute, but because he thought that small children all sounded like immigrants learning a foreign language in some helter-skelter but fairly amiable way. He knew that babies make all the sound...
What would the new teacher, representing France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fult...
[Henry] James's critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. [...] In England, ideas run wild and pasture on the emo...
Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would ha...
There is perhaps some hope to be derived from the fact that in most instances where an attempt to realize an ideal society gave birth to the ugliness and violence of a prolonged active mass movement the experiment was made on a vast scale and with a ...
You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, an...
Maj. Duncan Heyward: Might I inquire after the situation sir, given that I've seen the French engineering from the ridge above. Colonel Munro: The situation is that his guns are bigger than mine and he has more of them. We keep our heads down while h...
Edith: My God, what is this? It looks like a genuine Van Gogh, but I've never seen it before... Dan: Is that an original, John? John Oldman: No, it's just a gift someone gave me. Edith: Still, it's a superb copy. Contemporaneous I think, may I take a...
Bryan: [after Jean Claude tries to shoot him] That is what happens when you sit behind a desk. You forget things, like the weight in the hand of a gun that's loaded and one that's not. [Bryan pulls his gun and shoots Isabelle in the arm] Jean Claude:...
I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts--and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as mu...
Skank: [fast and hysterically] That's him! That's him! But he looked different. He was all painted up white like some sort of dead whore! I seen him! T-Bird he sent me in some road beers, right? Then he took him away. But, I chased him down. And he f...
Nick Fury: Why make me head of SHIELD? Alexander Pierce: Because you're the best. And the most ruthless person I ever met. Nick Fury: I did what I did to protect people. Alexander Pierce: Our enemies are your enemies, Nick. Disorder, war. It's just a...
Percy Garris: [singing] Oh don't you remember sweet Betsy from Pike / Crossed the high mountains with her lover Ike / Two yoke of oxen and big yellow dog / Called Shanghai rooster and one spotted hog / Hoodle-dang-hootie-i-doh, hoodle-dang-hootie-ay,...
The word "travel" comes from the Old French word "travail" (or "travailler"), which means "to work, to labor; a suffering or painful effort, an arduous journey, a tormenting experience." ("Travel," thus, is "a painful and laborious journey"). Whereas...
In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—-well, not even the young...
In a sexual double standard as to who receives consumer protection, it seems that if what you do is done to women in the name of beauty, you may do what you like. It is illegal to claim that something grows hair, or makes you taller, or restores viri...
The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a ...
When I was twelve I was obsessed. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at 'meretrix', a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. 'Meretrix'! This was none of your mensa-a-table, this was a flash from a ...
While the Zionists try to make the rest of the World believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn't even enter their heads to buil...
The 1980s witnessed radical advances in the theorisation of the study of literature in the universities. It had begun in France in the 1960s and it made a large impact on the higher education establishments of Britain and America. New life was breath...
The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, M...
