'I don't mean he has said so in so many words to me but it is in his mind; am not a mind-reader but I am sure it is there, Your Excellency...'
Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the Savanna
'I don't mean he has said so in so many words to me but it is in his mind; am not a mind-reader but I am sure it is there, Your Excellency...'
Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the Savanna
An apostrophe (‘) marks the place where the vowel is elided.
Greek Grammar; Herbert Weir Smyth
:D
haha Madame X :lol:
I have moved on from Dumas now... So I can have another go, can't I? I like this game :D.
'I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and he held me fast, and stll kissed me, till he was almost out of breath, and then, sitting down, saysi, 'Dear Betty, I am in love with you.'
Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
Still she 'tried' to get away... Shame she didn't, shame on you Moll, you should be a decent girl :lol:.
Oh my God, no wonder that the book was deemed indecent and banned by the pope! I like it :D. Very indecent :p.
I'd like to see the film about it. The actress said she had a great time, lying in the bed all the time and falling asleep between scenes... :D
That's got to be one of the best yet. Excellent sentence! I should read more Defoe: how about his biography of Dick Turpin?Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
My mother stomped off ahead, muttering, 'you're making a rod for your own bleeding backs,' as she attempted to light a cigarette in the stiff june gale.
Adrian Mole - the prostate years
If you like that one, how about this? This really made me roll on the floor yesterday (or in my bed anyway). I will spare you the story behind it which is also pretty saucy, but it's about a wedding night:Quote:
Originally Posted by neilgee
'Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage bed, but nothing could have happened more suitable to my circumstances than that, as above, my husband was so fuddled when he came to bed, that he could not remember in the morning whether he had had any conversation with me or no, and I was obliged to tell him he had, though in reality he had not, that I might be sure he could make no inquiry about anything else.'
:lol: :eek: So drunk you can't remember that you managed to do it or not?! And that on your wedding night where you are supposed to make sure your wife is a virgin...
Correction, 'had conversation' :p
That reminds me of a passage in Lost in Austen: not 'the night we kissed', but 'the night we... spoke'. 'Conversation' and the like must have been a regular euphemism.
Imagine it:
hubby: 'Hello my dear, did we have (a good) conversation yesterday or not?'
Moll: 'Yes, my darling, a very long one indeed.'
:lol: Modesty forbids her...
I don't know how Dick Turpin is. This is my first Defoe. I was making myself up for difficult, but I was so surprised to see that the language is pretty easy. The spelling, I think, has been updated, though.
And the same click in the brain told Adam that his father was not a great man, that he was, indeed, a very strong willed and concentrated little man wearing a huge busby.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Last time I tried this I came up with a good sentence. And it's happened again! Spooky. The sentence is:
"Please don't equate simplicity with stupidity"
from "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing" by John C. Bogle (A very useful book for literati who want to spend as liitle time as possible in the sewers of investment planning, and want to give away as liitle as possible of their money to greedy and stupid bankers.)
"All right," Wilson said.
~The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Because I happen to be on the twenty-third page:
"Jafnan skemmtu þau Helga sér at tafli ok Gunnlaugr.":D
Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu.
And what does it mean... :redface:
yeah, what does it mean? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
"W akcie miłosnym tkwi wielkie podobieństwo do tortury lub operacji chirurgicznej"
Charles Baudelaire, "My Heart Laid Bare"
it would be something like: "In the act of lovemaking there's a great resemblance to torture or surgery"
I was a little bemused about the French, until I saw it was in Polish (the l goves everything away). I was just seeing which words I still knew from my immersion in September when I saw the translation...
Not a lot, I'm afraid... only 'wielki', 'akcie' (not too difficult), 'operacji chirurgicznej', 'do' and 'w'. I couldn't remember what 'lub' was, but I had heard it often.
Its a bit clunky in English, but it roughly translates to "Helga was always at table (which means playing a board-game similar to chess) with Gunnlaugr."Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
And they say romance is dead...
From The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
As he sat, Manning heard a surprising clicking sound from anteroom.
aaaahhQuote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna
When I entered the temple, he was asleep on his back, with a brick wrapped in sackcloth under his head as a pillow.
- An Obedient Father (Akhil Sharma)
In this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the post, which contained a proposal particularly well timed. (Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen)
My German is a little lacking... something like "Only I can speak, you can't pronounce" ??? Is that close? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by DanielBenoit
Not really...Quote:
Originally Posted by Jazz_
'I can only speak of you, pronounce you I cannot.'
Any lady.
Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall
Next sentence is: "Any well-conected pricess whom he thinks might give him a son.
(Yes it is about Henry VIII's time)
Ah, that makes more sense, thanks :)Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
"As I run I tell myself to think of a river."
From What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
"Last month, much to Langdon's embarrasment, Boston Magazine had listed him as one of that city's top ten most intriguing people - a dubious honor that made him the brunt of endless ribbing by his Harvard colleagues."
From The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown :sick:
Oh bravo! I admire your bravery. That book is just teeming with little nasty treasures like these.Quote:
Originally Posted by toni
More comfortable down below in that thick stew pouring into the Gare St Lazare, the whores in the doorways, seltzer bottles on every table; a thick tide of semen flooding the gutters.
Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
Deeply moved with such a generous gift, which included a large shot pouch and finely wrought brass powder flask, Simon promptly-and with Butlers approval-named the weapon Jacob, feeling that in times to come it would stand by him as the miller himself had done.
Allan Eckart, the Frontiersmen
Whew, it just had to be that sentence!
"She had this thing where guys would propose to her all the time, which I never understood."
My Horizontal Life: A Collection Of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler
From Koko by Peter Straub
"Then Poole heard a faint click and rustle, as of some object being pulled from a casing."
Angelic Host
Glory to God in the highest,
Heaven and earth do both Him praise,
Who with one Word brought all things into being
And continues to uphold them with His gaze.
"When I asked if I could just ride out to the rivermouth with Loonie he shook his head."
Breath by Tim Winton
Aubrey was kneeling down, holding one of the baby's legs.
Marcos sank into a deep depression that lasted two or three days, at the end of which he announced that he would never marry and that he was embarking on a trip around the world.
-The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The headlines were strangely frightening, with an inhuman cheerfulness and power: [...]
(can't be bothered writing it all, too long :D)
Victor Pelevin, "Omon Ra", trans. by Andrew Bloomfield.
This is from Lecturas Simplificadas: El Sombrero de Tres Picos:
Garduña se muestra complaciente con el Corregidor. (Verdadero o Falso)
"The Irish ollave's chief interest was the refinement of complex poetic truth to exact statement." - Robert Graves, 'The White Goddess'.
He curled his hand round the back of his ear and inclined his head towards each girl to test her voice.
The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Longman edition:
"Good sir, be patient."
From Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard
Trying to distract himself from these thoughts, Jim switched on the car radio.
"Be mithfull now, at all your micht" - 'Middle English Poetry.