vishal menon

“may classify the styles of the various authors in broad divisions as (1) dry, (2) plain, (3) neat, (4) elegant, (5) florid, (6) bombastic.”
― Joseph Devlin, How to Speak and Write Correctly

“Plutarch's Lives, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Chaucer, Imitation of Christ (Thomas a Kempis), Holy Living and Holy Dying (Jeremy Taylor), Pilgrim's Progress, Macaulay's Essays, Bacon's Essays, Addison's Essays, Essays of Elia (Charles Lamb), Les Miserables (Hugo), Heroes and Hero Worship (Carlyle), Palgrave's Golden Treasury, Wordsworth, Vicar of Wakefield, Adam Bede (George Eliot), Vanity Fair (Thackeray), Ivanhoe (Scott), On the Heights (Auerbach), Eugenie Grandet (Balzac), Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne), Emerson's Essays, Boswell's Life of Johnson, History of the English People (Green), Outlines of Universal History, Origin of Species, Montaigne's Essays, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning, Whittier, Ruskin, Herbert Spencer.”
― Joseph Devlin, How to Speak and Write Correctly

“Putting both your hands in your pockets was against the rules. So was ‘running in the corridors’. However, fagging – acting as an older boy’s unpaid servant – and beating were still permitted. Corporal punishment could be administered by the housemaster or even by the boy named as Head of House.”
― Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir

“habit of calling each other ‘Jim’. No darlings or honeys or babes for them. In his low American drawl and her bright English chirp they Jimmed the Old Year out. ‘Hey, Jim?’ ‘Yes, Jim?’ ‘Happy New Year, Jim.’ ‘Happy New Year to you too, Jim.’ ‘I love you, Jim.’ ‘I love you too, Jim.’ 1990 arrived with a smile in the company of Jim and Jim.”
― Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton: A Memoir