Then Quotes (page 187)
It's very soon done, sir, isn't it?' inquired Mr. Folair of the collector, leaning over the table to address him.
What is soon done, sir?' returned Mr. Lillyvick.
The tying up, the fixing oneself with a wife,' replied Mr. Folair. 'It don't take long, does it?'
No, sir,' replied Mr. Lillyvick, colouring. 'It does not take long. And what then, sir?'
Oh! nothing,' said the actor. 'It don't take a man long to hang himself, either, eh? Ha, ha!
Charles Dickens
First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make enough forthem both to get drunk on. Then in another village they started adancing-school; but they didn't know no more how to dance than a kangaroodoes; so the first prance they made the general public jumped in andpranced them out of town. Another time they tried to go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the audience got up and give them asolid good cussing, and made them skip out.
Mark Twain
This is our one and only chance at mortal life-here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by. As you plan for that illusive, nonexistent future when you will have time to do...
Thomas S. Monson
and if he could survivethe experience without completely losing heart, then perhapsthere was some hope for him after all. By sticking with thecab, he wasn't trying to make the best of a bad situation. Hewas looking for a way to make things happen, and until he understoodwhat those things were, he wouldn't have the right torelease himself from his bondage.
Paul Auster
He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flapped like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moon-driven.
Nathanael West
To visit the Tower, then, is to enter into contact not with a historical Sacred, as is the case for the majority of monuments, but rather with a new nature, that of human space: the Tower is not a trace, a souvenir, in short culture; but an immediate consumption of a humanity made natural by that glance which transforms it into space.
Roland Barthes
You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? he can't value you...
Toni Morrison
There was a deliberate voluptuousness that was both thrilling and repulsive. And as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal till I could see in the moonlight the moisture Then lapped the white, sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head. I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited.
Bram Stoker
There can be no emblem or parable in a village idiot's hallucinations or in last night's dream of any of us in this hall. In those random visions nothing? underline nothing (grating sound of horizontal stroke can be construed as allowing itself to be deciphered y a witch doctor that can then cure a madman or give confort to a killer by laying the blame on a too fond, too fiendish or too indifferent parent? secret festerings that the foster quack feigns to heal by expensive confession feasts...
Vladimir Nabokov