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What relief is there still to seek, what forces could I bring to my aid in this calamity? Not even these goddesses, however willing, could support me in my sorry canvassing.

And about these additional, miscellaneous, and even inferior works of Dickens there is, moreover, another use and fascination which all Dickensians will understand; which, after a manner, is not for the profane. All who love Dickens have a strange sense that he is really inexhaustible.

We were within pistol shot of one of a group of islands whose ferocious inhabitants closed in upon the doomed and helpless Captain Cook and murdered him, eighty-seven years ago; and lo! their descendants were at church! Behold what the missionaries have wrought!

[W]e realized that the warnings we had been given about Andean roads ... had not been all exaggeration. As if to emphasize the lesson, one of the sharpest corners was decorated by a cluster of small wooden crosses. 'A truck went over,' the driver explained, grinning. 'Many Indians were killed.'

Unhappy pitiful degenerates with uncoordinated movements.

I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. Mrs Williams's eyes followed the direction of mine, and going to the doorway, she laughingly said, 'Come in, Shelley, it's only our friend Tre[lawny] just arrived.'

I played a cowboy and an Indian in the same movie—I think I may even have shot myself!

'This lake is the source of the Rio Negro,' she said. 'It flows all the way to Mexico and then to the Atlantic. In this beautiful lake we have very fat fish.' She beamed. Then another thought occurred.
'In that lake last year there were also five severed heads. They were too decomposed to know the sex.'

Good Friday is a black day in the Christian calendar. It is the one day of the year when mass cannot be said; altars and images everywhere are decked in purple. But not so in Amecameca. The Indians of Mexico are well aware of the horror of death, but it is precisely that horror which they wish to celebrate: It lifts their spirits.

Jammed in between two vast mountain ranges, there is the Takla Makan desert (a name roughly translated as "you go in but do not return"), incongruous swamps, and miles of high, grass-covered steppes that roll monotonously toward the horizon -- or so I had heard.

He reached a bushy patch and could only zigzag ahead. He was shivering with cold, though the first rays of the sun had begun to light up the land. I'll have a little rest, he thought, and sank to the ground. He lay on his side, in the position of the embryo in the womb....

As his throat constricted he could taste blackberries and cranberries. The final image on the screen of his mind was of a fleeing flock of deer running up the hill, reddish purple dust swirling round their hoofs, their antlers scraping and scratching the sky that covered the ground.

This was only the first of his mother's promises not to be fulfilled. It was to be followed by many more. No younger brother or sister was born. He was not educated in an expensive school. He did not become a well-to-do landowner. He did not become a respected member of the community. He did not live to a ripe old age.

In the few days that remained to him Bálint Sternovszky could not sit up, or move, or speak. Still, he was restless. He explored his family's history, a tireless traveler of the mind, and tried without cease to think how he might pass on the substance of his visions. If only he could lift just one finger he might be able to do it, might be able to give a sign. He agonized in vain; there was no way.

'OK, brother,' he says ... 'but I don't like this Goyaz stuff one little bit.'
I grin.
'I don't like it neither,' I says. 'It's tough enough trying to string along with Siegella -- but with Goyaz too, it's like takin' yea with rattlesnakes.;

It was as if I had burst through the bottom of my plans and was falling through darkness. I would continue to fall: there was absolutely nothing to do until dawn. My feet hurt; I was tired, dirty, sweating; I had not eaten all day..... Costa Rica had seemed to promise better than this dark end.

You define your own horror journey, according to your taste. My definition of what makes a journey wholly or partially horrible is boredom.

[W]e have forged [North Carolina], free from northern interference and the contamination of a lesser race. The black horde has been beaten back, correcting the mistake made years ago at this nation's nativity. Some, like our brothers just over the state line, have embraced the absurd notion of nigger uplift. Easier to teach a donkey arithmetic.

Her price fluctuated.When you are sold so many times, the world is teaching you to pay attention.

Already couriers were on their way to Cornelia with news that her husband [Pompey the Great] had achieved a great success at Durres and he was now in hot pursuit of [Julius] Caesar. The message-bringers assured Cornelia that Caesar's ultimate defeat was now just a matter of time.

I have been to Maski, I have seen it and I have returned. It is out there toward the setting sun. That is where each of us will travel when the sun of his life goes down. I know now what I could not accept before, that when the dry stalk of a person's body goes into the earth, it stays there and the flesh falls away. But the breath of his life takes the trail to the west.

If these things are done properly I will send rain when the people are in need. But they must also live good lives. When a stranger comes to the village, feed him. Do not injure one another, because all beings deserve to live together without injury being done to them. When people are old and cannot work any more, do not turn them out to shift for themselves, but take care of them.

There is something flame-like and anti-constructive in the Arab, with his pastoral habits and contempt of forethought.

And here they kneel, candle in hand, on the wet flags of this foetid and malodorous cave, gazing in rapture upon the blandly beaming idol, their sensibilities tickled by resplendent priests reciting full-mouthed Latin phrases, while the organ overhead plays wheezy extracts from “La Forza del Destino” or the Waltz out of Boito’s “Mefistofele”... for sure, it must be a foretaste of Heaven!

And Bianca was a blonde with no inhibitions, married to the Marquis de La Froid-Désire. Bianca was also utterly naive about men—a rare woman, indeed. So rare in fact that, defying the basic prejudices of a Catholic country, she had permitted herself to become mistress to a bishop.

We ourselves may never see this cottonwood reach maturity, probably will never take pleasure in its shade or birds or witness the pale gold of its autumn leaves. But somebody will. Something will.

“If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If
you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world’s end
without fear. I can give up nothing for you—I have nothing to resign,
and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to
you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have
sense and memory left.”

The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if
they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was not
quite darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding night
was shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end.

The dress had savage retribution in
it as such dresses ever have, and made her infinitely older and more
hideous than her greasy flannel gown. But Mrs Skewton tried it on with
mincing satisfaction; smirked at her cadaverous self in the glass, as
she thought of its killing effect upon the Major; and suffering her
maid to take it off again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into
ruins like a house of painted cards

Thus, with no one to advise her—for she could advise with no one
without seeming to complain against him—gentle Florence tossed on an
uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr Carker, like a scaly monster of
the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her.