Novelists and police-inspectors do not always see eye to eye as regards publicity.
So she will,” said the Dowager. “You’ll see that young man in the Cabinet before very long. Such a handsome couple on a public platform, and very sound, I’m told, about pigs, and that’s so important, the British breakfast-table being what it is.
She is a very conscientious person,” said Miss Lydgate, “but she has rather an unfortunate knack of making any subject sound dull. It’s a great pity, because she is exceptionally sound and dependable. However, that doesn’t greatly matter in her present appointment; she holds a librarianship somewhere – Miss.
People who seek to serve the community end up falsifying their work, she wrote, whether the work is writing a novel or baking bread, because they are not single- mindedly focused on the task at hand. But if you serve the work – if you perform each task to its utmost perfection – then you will experience the deep satisfaction of craftsmanship and you will end up serving the community more richly than you could have consciously planned.
May I express the hope that the present union may happily exemplify that which we find in a first-class port – strength of body fortified by a first-class spirit and mellowing through many years to a noble maturity. My lord and my lady – your very good health!
With tobacco and literature one could face out any situation, provided, of course, that the book was not written in an unknown tongue.
Harriet agreed that intellectual women should marry and reproduce their kind; but she pointed out the English husband had something to say in the matter and that, very often, he did not care for an intellectual wife.
I think,’ said Bredon, who was accustomed to his father’s meaningless outbursts of speech, ‘she’s silly.’ ‘So do I; but don’t say I said so.’ ‘And rude.’ ‘And rude. I, on the other hand, am silly, but seldom rude. Your mother is neither rude nor silly.’ ‘Which am I?’ ‘You are an egotistical extravert of the most irrepressible type.
Any fool can tell a lie, and any fool can believe it; but the right method is to tell the truth in such a way that the intelligent reader is seduced into telling the lie for himself.
Yet no woman had ever so stirred his blood; she had only to look or speak to make the very bones shake in his body.
But even a watched pot cannot absorb heat for ever.
Together with this outrage we may take the mutilation of the novel called The Search at the exact point where the author upholds, or appears for the moment to uphold, the doctrine that loyalty to the abstract truth must override all personal considerations;.
There are many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation,” said Parker placidly.
Within, a cheerful bustle in the bar announced the near arrival of opening time. Eight ducks crossed the road in Indian file. A cat sprang up upon the bench, stretched herself, tucked her hind legs under her and coiled her tail tightly round them as though to prevent them from accidentally working loose. A groom passed, riding a tall bay horse and leading a chestnut with a hogged mane; a spaniel followed them, running ridiculously, with one ear flopped inside-out over his foolish head.
Duke’s son, cook’s son, son of a hundred kings – people will stand there for hours on end, with their ear-drums splitting – why? Simply for the pleasure of being idle while other people work.
Oh! are you detecting now?’ ‘Like anything. If you could take the top of my head off, you would see the wheels whizzing round.’ ‘I see. You’re not detecting me, I hope.’ ‘Everybody always hopes that.
Miss Climpson’s active mind quickly conjured up a picture of the rabbit-fair-haired and a little paunchy, with a habit of saying, “I’ll ask the wife.” Miss Climpson wondered why Providence saw fit to create such men. For Miss Climpson, men were intended to be masterful, even though wicked or foolish. She was a spinster made and not born- a perfectly womanly woman.
Possessiveness isn’t unprecedented.’ ‘On the contrary – it’s as common as mud. But to recognise it in one’s self and chuck it overboard is – unusual. If you want to be a normal person, my girl, you should let it rip and give yourself and everybody else hell with it. And you should call it something else – devotion or self-sacrifice and that sort of thing. If you go on behaving with all this reason and generosity, everybody will think we don’t give a damn for one another.
Yes – but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won’t understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they’ll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless, they’ll be quite wrong both times – but they won’t ever know it, and you won’t know it at first, and it’ll worry you.
This was a syllogistic monstrosity even worse than the last, thought Wimsey. A man who could reason like that could not reason at all. He constructed a new syllogism for himself. The man who committed this murder was not a fool. Weldon is a fool. Therefore Weldon did not commit this murder. That appeared to be sound, so far as it went.