[Ads-l] Quotes from Famous Short Stories

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Thu Jan 25 15:53:33 UTC 2018


> On Jan 25, 2018, at 5:22 AM, W Brewer <brewerwa at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> << Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail. >>
> 
> "The Mark on the Wall." by Virginia Woolf
> From: Monday or Tuesday, by Virginia Woolf  (1882-1941).
> New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1921.
> 
> (Doubtless, some would insist on a spoiler alert. Otherwise, here's my
> second-favorite Mark-on-the-Wall quote:)
> 
> << Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world,
> with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields. A world without
> professors or specialists or house-keepers with the profiles of policemen,
> a world which one could slice with one’s thought as a fish slices the water
> with his fin, grazing the stems of the water-lilies, hanging suspended over
> nests of white sea eggs.... How peaceful it is drown here,


< “down here”, perhaps, with the influence of the surrounding water?  “drown” seems more likely a Joycean pun than a Woolfian venture

> rooted in the
> centre of the world and gazing up through the grey waters, with their
> sudden gleams of light, and their reflections—if it were not for Whitaker’s
> Almanack—if it were not for the Table of Precedency! >>
> 
> -----WB.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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