aclassicalmess's Reviews (165)

Are not all appearances deceptive in the end? Whatever there is within us - whether good, or bad, or neither - its existence will continue uninterrupted, will it not, no matter what the drape of our clothes, or the colour of our skin? What if it is the world that is a duperie, Mr Reid, and we the exceptions to its lies?

Where are the men?' I asked her. 

'In their proper places, where they ought to be.'

'Pray let me know what you mean by "their proper places".'

'O, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.'

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

And what is the future happy one?
A sea beneath a cloudless sun,
A mighty, glorious, dazzling sea
Stretching into infinity.

Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth they may feel their poverty the more sensibly. This is the infernal serpent that creeps into the breasts of mortals, and possesses them too much to be easily drawn out.

“You should wear the flames more often,” he says. “They suit you.” And then he gives me a smile that seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.

She is born, she lives, simply in the wrong time! This is just not her day! Maybe not her millennium. Modern life has caught that woman completely unawares and up the arse. Her mind is gone. Buggered. And you? You have picked up the wrong life in the cloakroom and must return it.

‘Maria,’ I whispered, ‘how can one person make another person so happy? What amazing powers we must have hidden deep inside of us.’

It was all so much bigger than themselves, that he was hushed. They had met, and included in their meeting the thrust of the manifold grass stems, the cry of the peewit, the wheel of the stars.
When they stood up they saw other lovers stealing down the opposite hedge. It seemed natural they were there. The night contained them.