V

“I do not consider her choice of a piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if anything, disturbs.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“It was the smile of Narcissus bending over the water mirror, the deep, enchanted, protracted smile with which he stretched out his arms to the reflection of his own beauty, an ever so slightly contorted smile—contorted by the hopelessness of his endeavor to kiss the lovely lips of his shadow—and coquettish, inquisitive and mildly pained, beguiled and beguiling.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

“she did lie
In her pavillion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy out-work nature”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to re-enter it.”
― E. M. Forster, Room with a View, A