It makes your sin no worse, as I conceive, to do it a la mode

Heading South so I can go North
Guided by birds but drifting off course
Read the tide-table before starting out
But 30 years old with chapters torn out
You, waking up from a dream of the sea
Safe in the harbour from sailors like me
You, in the kitchen, waiting on tea
Whilst I lose the compass to a trick of the sea

I did not usurp the crown. I found it — in the gutter.

I am growing great in Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots.

Try to preserve an author’s style as if he is an author and has a style.

Very like a whale.

What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children over, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead!

Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned—I think he was caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday when he was only ruler’d on both hands—and was always going to write to his uncle about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for ever. But I believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.

She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

He has danced in every palace of every capital, played in every club. He has hunted elephants through the jungles of India, boar through the forest of Austria, pigs over the plains of Massachusetts … He has ridden through Moscow, in strange apparel, to kiss the catafalque of more than one Tzar … Be he gallant, the ladies are at his feet.

What audacious criminal, what mystifier, what maniac collector, what insane lover, has committed this abduction?

Scarcely knowing where he was, or what he was about, I am sorry to say, that while standing, as well as he could, beside Miss Wildfire, to dance for the fifth time with her—a plump, fair-faced, good-natured girl of about nineteen or twenty—he suddenly threw his arms round her, and imprinted half-a-dozen kisses on her forehead, lips, cheek, and neck, before she could recover from the confusion into which this monstrous outrage had thrown her. Her faint shriek reached her father’s ears while he was, in a distant part of the room, persecuting poor Miss Quirk with his drunken and profligate impertinences.

Your case is unique in the annals of crime. We know not whom you are, whence you came, your birth and breeding—all is a mystery to us. Three years ago you appeared in our midst as Arsène Lupin, presenting to us a strange combination of intelligence and perversion, immorality and generosity. Our knowledge of your life prior to that date is vague and problematical. It may be that the man called Rostat who, eight years ago, worked with Dickson, the prestidigitator, was none other than Arsène Lupin. It is probable that the Russian student who, six years ago, attended the laboratory of Doctor Altier at the Saint Louis Hospital, and who often astonished the doctor by the ingenuity of his hypotheses on subjects of bacteriology and the boldness of his experiments in diseases of the skin, was none other than Arsène Lupin. It is probable, also, that Arsène Lupin was the professor who introduced the Japanese art of jiu-jitsu to the Parisian public. We have some reason to believe that Arsène Lupin was the bicyclist who won the Grand Prix de l’Exposition, received his ten thousand francs, and was never heard of again. Arsène Lupin may have been, also, the person who saved so many lives through the little dormer-window at the Charity Bazaar; and, at the same time, picked their pockets.

He helped himself to some more marmalade, and poured out another cup of coffee. Nothing is more thrilling, thought he, than to be treated as a cully by the person you hold in the hollow of your hand.

Every night I would strut at the bar, in the red light and dust of that earthly paradise, lying fantastically and drinking at length. I would wait for dawn and at last end up in the always unmade bed of my princess, who would indulge mechanically in sex and then sleep without transition. Day would come softly to throw light on this disaster and I would get up and stand motionless in a dawn of glory.

Despairing of love and of chastity, I at last bethought myself of debauchery, a substitute for love, which quiets the laughter, restores silence, and above all, confers immortality.

Adeimantus: But if a single state amasses the wealth of all the others, will not that be a danger to a state that has none?
Socrates: I congratulate you on your idea that any state other than the one we are constructing deserves the name.
Adeimantus: Why, what should the others be called?
Socrates: By some grander name, for each of them is not one state, but many: two at least, which are at war with another, one of the rich, the other of the poor, and each of these is divided into many more.

He had an execrable eye — full of insolence and sensuality.

The principal figures before her mind’s eye were — Tittlebat Titmouse, Esquire, and The Rev. Dismal Horror. The latter was about twenty-six (he had been “called to the work of the ministry” in his sixteenth year); short; his face slightly pitted with small-pox; his forehead narrow; his eyes cold and watery; no eyebrows or whiskers; high cheek-bones; his short dark hair combed primly forward over each temple, and twisted into a sort of topknot in front; he wore no shirt-collar, but had a white neck-handkerchief tied very formally, and was dressed in an ill-made suit of black. He spoke in a drawling, canting tone; and his countenance was overspread with a demure expression of — Cunning, trying to look religious.

At a distance, she might have been a wraith; or a breeze made visible; a vagrom breeze, warm and delicate, and in league with death.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But set him loose among his fellows, and he is lost — he becomes just a unit in unreason.

Be they never so Withered, no Milk-Maiden grieves
to lay herself down among Strawberry Leaves

…those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied.

…for so it happens that, in this country, the more hideous the crime, the more intense the curiosity of the upper classes of both sexes to witness the miscreant perpetrator; the more disgusting the details, the greater the avidity with which they are listened to by the distinguished auditors;—the reason being plain, that, as they have exhausted the pleasures and excitements afforded by their own sphere of action and enjoyment, their palled and sated appetites require novel and more powerful stimulants. Hence, at length, we see “fashionables” peopling even the condemned cell—rushing, in excited groups, after the shuddering malefactor, staggering, half palsied, and with horror-laden eye, on his way to the gallows!

Then, in the evenings, there were theatres, great and small, the various taverns, and other places of nocturnal resort, which are the secret pride and glory of the metropolis—but to which shall not more distinctly allude. In addition to this, at an advanced period of the night, or rather early hour in the morning, he sedulously strove to perfect himself in those higher arts and accomplishments, excelled in by one or two of the more eminent of the youthful aristocracy, viz., breaking windows, pulling bells, wrenching off knockers, extinguishing lamps, tripping up old women, watchmen, and children, and spoiling their clothes;— ah, how often in his humbler days had his heart panted in noble rivalry of such feats as these, and emulation of the notoriety which they earned for the glittering miscreants who excelled in them!