Sublime

On the one hand the scene was hilarious: the manager bullied by his staff; the priestly Pianon helplessly aroused by the loud, ribald female crowd around him. Shay has always amused herself by envisioning him as the arid scholar Casaubon from Middlemarch, transplanted to the tropics and engrossed not in the Key to All Mythologies, but in an endless

If a minstrel must embroider the truth to help us recall it fully, then let her, and let no one say she has lied. Truth is often much larger than facts.

are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the great

“Mark my words, girls. There is no greater enemy of virtue than a charming Welshman.” Feeling Pandora’s elbow poking discreetly against her side, Helen reflected with chagrin that she could vouch for that.

‘Never,’ said my aunt, ‘be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.’

“But we are the good guys. Aren’t we, Uncle?” “I hope so. I hope we are.”

Patrick Leigh Fermor would be quite high on any list, starting with The Traveller’s Tree, a wonderful book about the Caribbean, absolutely splendid. Everything he does, he has a sort of magic touch with. And I think Evelyn Waugh is very observant, very funny. I’ve read his books more than once.

It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision such as this—in the free exercise in the open air ensured by the personal superintendence of his plans—in the unceasing object which these plans afforded—in the high spirituality of the object—in the contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to feel—in the perennial springs

We might cry a little if we let ourselves be tamed…