Stlylistic syntax

Exercise I. Discriminate between syntactic stylistic devices based on the absence of elements:

1. EDUCATION. – At Mr Wackford Squeers’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled.

(Ch. Dickens)

2. Where we differ from each other is purely in accidentals – in dress, manner, tone of voice, religious opinions, personal appearance, tricks of habit, and the like. (O. Wilde)

3. Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. “You’re very polite, but I belong to another generation,” he announced solemnly. “You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your – ” He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand. “As for me, I am fifty years old, and I won’t impose myself on you any longer.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. “Oh, it isn’t about that. At least –” He fumbled with a series of beginnings. “Why, I thought – why, look here, old sport, you don’t make much money, do you?” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. “Left no address?”

“No.”

“Say when they’d be back?”

“No.”

“Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?”

“I don’t know. Can’t say.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. “Oh, there you are, darling. You are sweet. Thank you very much. Must dash, going to miss the plane. Byee!” she said, grabbing the banknotes from my hand. (H. Fielding)

8. “The Mouse. Beginning of a hand, don’t you think?”

“Nice line.”

Breasly nodded down toward the huge canvas. “I let her help. The donkey-work.”

David murmured, “On that scale …”

“Clever girl, Williams. Don’t let her fool you. Shouldn’t make fun of her.” The old man stared down at the drawing. “Deserves better.” Then, “Couldn’t do without her, really.”

“I’m sure she’s learning a lot.”

“Know what people say. Old rake and all that. Man my age.” (J. Fowles)

9. Love and beauty and art; the world well lost. (W.S. Maugham)

10. The Cadillac sideswiped a line of cars across the street and came to a grinding stop against them. Starling was walking toward the Cadillac now. A shooter still sat in the back window, his eyes wild and hands pushing against the car roof, his chest compressed between the Cadillac and a parked car. Starling ignored him.

Gunfire from her right and the runner pitched forward, sliding on his face, and tried to crawl under a car. Helicopter blades blatting above her.

Someone yelling in the fish market, “Stay down. Stay down.” People under the counters and water at the abandoned cleaning table showering into the air.

Starling advanced on the Cadillac. Movement in the back of the car. Movement in the Cadillac. The car rocking. The baby screaming in there. Gunfire and the back window shattered and fell in. (Th. Harris)

11. Elliot liked the summer there because the hot weather gave him the opportunity to indulge in a gaiety of dress that his sense of decorum had always forced him to eschew. He would appear then in trousers of startling colour, red, blue, green or yellow, and with them wear singlets of contrasting hue, mauve, violet, puce, or harlequin, and would accept the compliments his attire clamoured for with the deprecating grace of an actress who is told that she played a new role divinely. (W.S. Maugham)

12. And although Maxim had recovered, and was himself again, and we lived together, sleeping, eating, walking, writing letters, driving to the village, working hour by hour through our day, I knew there was a barrier between us because of it. (D. du Maurier)

13. Brough sighed as she went upstairs.

Women! There was no way of understanding how their minds and, even, their emotions worked. (P. Jordan)

14. “I want her held for obstructing justice, for tampering with a witness in a capital case, for conspiracy, for …”. He was incoherent with rage. (S. Sheldon)

15. “…I’d be delighted to have you.”

“Be ver’ nice,” said Mr Sloane, without gratitude. “Well – think ought to be starting home.”

“Please don’t hurry,” Gatsby urged them. He had control of himself now, and he wanted to see more of Tom. “Why don’t you – why don’t you stay for supper? I wouldn’t be surprised if some other people dropped in from New York.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. “If there’s nothing else …” Judge Waldman began.

“There is something else.” (S. Sheldon)

17. “Do you remember Mark, darling? He’s one of those top-notch barristers. Masses of money. Divorced.” (H. Fielding)

18. “Are you accusing me of - ?”

“Accusing you?” – Robert Di Silva clenched his fists. (S. Sheldon)

19. “He’s just back from America, apparently. Divorced. He’s looking for a house in Holland Park. Apparently he had the most terrible with his wife. Japanese. Very cruel race.” (H. Fielding)

20. “Espresso? Filter? Latte? Cap: half fat or de-caf?” snapped the waitress, sweeping all the plates off the table next to her and looking at me accusingly as if Mum was my fault.

“Half fat de-caf cap and a latte,” I whispered apologetically. (H. Fielding)

21. “Oh, but Mum, I have to work with Daniel, I – ”

“Darling – wrong way round. He has to work with you. Give him hell, baby”. (H. Fielding)

Exercise II. Differentiate syntactic stylistic devices based on the excess of syntactical elements:

1. He who would lead a Christ-like life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself. He may be a great poet, or a great man of science; or a young student at the university, or one who watches sheep upon a moor; or a maker of dramas, like Shakespeare, or a thinker about God, like Spinoza; or a child who plays in a garden, or a fisherman who throws his nets into the sea. It does not matter what he is as long as he realizes the perfection of the soul that is within him. (O. Wilde)

2. In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina O’Brian came there at least once and the Baedeker girls and young Brewer, who had his nose shot off in the war, and Mr Albrucksburger and Miss Haag, his fiancée, and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr P. Jewett, once head of the American Legion, and Miss Claudia Hip, with a man reputed to be her chauffeur, and a prince of something, whom we called Duke, and whose name, if I ever knew it, I have forgotten. All these people came to Gatsby’s house in the summer. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. She began to cry – she cried and cried. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. “This is a terrible mistake,” he (Gatsby) said, shaking his head from side to side, “a terrible, terrible mistake.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. Everyone else at the table had got up to dance, except him and me. There I was, trapped. Trapped like a trap in a trap. (D. Parker)

6. From East Egg, then, came the Chester Beckers and the Leeches, and a man named Bunsen, whom I knew at Yale, and Doctor Webster Civet, who was drowned last summer up in Maine. And the Hornbeams and the Willie Voltaires, and a whole clan named Blackbuck, who always gathered in a corner and flipped up their noses like goats at whoever came near. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

7. The word fell, slow, slow, slow, like drops of water in a basin from a defective tap. (W.S. Maugham)

8. “It’s really, really, really amazing,” Gave was saying. “It’s, like, a sullied Utopia with these really, really, really good echoes of, like lost national identities.” (H. Fielding)

9. In the bar of the Hotel du Cap, it’s the same scene as it was the night before and the night before that and lunch the day before and lunch the day before that. (C. Bushnell)

10. I shot back upstairs, grabbed back the doormat and there, nestling underneath like a Christmas miracle, was a little pile of cards, letters and invitations all addressed to me. Me. Me. Me. (H. Fielding)

11. I realized that, although your mother is the most impossible woman in the world, Julio loves her. He really loves her. (H. Fielding)

12. I had learnt my lesson. Read English news, yes, and English sport, politics and pomposity, but in future keep the things that hurt to myself alone. They can be my secret indulgence. Colour and scent and sound, rain and the lapping of water, even the mists of autumn and the smell of the flood tide, these are memories of Manderley that will not be denied. (D. du Maurier)

13. “Oh, I want to get out of here! I’m going back home. Take me home” – her voice rose to a scream that sent a chill to Harry’s heart as he came racing down the next passage – “to-morrow!” she cried with delirious, unrestrained passion – “To-morrow! To-morrow! Tomorrow!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. And in the daytime Frith would hear him in the library pacing up and down. Up and down. Up and down. (D. du Maurier)

15. The Destiny waltz, the Blue Danube, The Merry Widow, one-two-three, one-two-three, round-and-round, one-two-three, one-two-three, round-and-round. (D. du Maurier)

16. They gossiped about the latest scandal. They tore their friends to pieces. They banded great names from one to the other. They seemed to know everybody. They were in on all the secrets. Almost in a breath they touched upon the latest play, the latest dressmaker, the latest portrait painter, and the latest mistress of the latest painter. (W.S. Maugham)

17. “Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!” shouted Mrs Wilson. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai -”

Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. 8.20 a.m. Will just go downstairs and see if post has come.

8.22 a.m. Post has not come.

8.27 a.m. Post has still not come.

8.30 a.m. Post has come! Hurrah!

8.35 a.m. Was bank statement. Nothing from Mark, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing. (H. Fielding)

19. “I want you to be very nice to her, Isabel.”

“That’s asking too much. You’re crazy. She’s bad, bad, bad.”

(W.S. Maugham)

20. The light above the telephone went completely out, came on, went out, came on, and repeated the process six more times before going out altogether. (H.E. Bates)

21. Amory talked with an ingenious brilliance of a thousand impulses and desires and repulsions and faiths and fears. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise III. Discriminate cases of syntactic tautology in the following examples:

1. To me beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. (O. Wilde)

2. Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies. (O. Wilde)

3. It is only when we have learned to love forgetfulness that we have learned the art of living. (O. Wilde)

4. When they met again, two days later, it was Gatsby who was breathless, who was, somehow, betrayed. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. It was James Gatz who had been loafing along the beach that afternoon in a torn green jersey and a pair of canvas pants, but it was already Jay Gatsby who borrowed a rowboat, pulled out the Tuolomee, and informed Cody that a wind might catch and break him up in half an hour.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. We neither of us had a word to say for ourselves. (D. du Maurier)

7. We none of us want to bring back the past, Maxim least of all.

(D. du Maurier)

8. She had an amazing gift, Rebecca I mean, of being attractive to people; men, women, children, dogs. (D. du Maurier)

9. They would every one of them have some criticism to offer, some curiosity to know what sort of effort I should make. (D. du Maurier)

10. Mrs. Danvers never obtruded herself, but I was aware of her continually. It was her voice I heard in the drawing-room when they came to put the tables, it was she who gave directions for the laying of the floor in the hall. (D. du Maurier)

11. She had all the courage and the spirit of a boy, had my Mrs. de Winter. (D. du Maurier)

12. “Don’t you believe it,” Ma said. “It’s one of them Julys. I’ve seen ‘em before. They never get right. By the time you get into August it’s like they have in India. What are they called, Charley, them things?” (H.E. Bates)

13. “My mate,” the Captain said, “he have new wooden leg.” (H.E. Bates)

14. “Craker was on duty; we others got into a waiting car, motored into Tarleton and left Craker’s girl.” (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. “Your husband is a very able man, I imagine.”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Ahearn assured her eagerly. “He’s brainy, Clarence is. Ideas and enthusiasm, you know. Finds out what he wants and then goes and gets it.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. You know it was I who took your son away. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. But Dick Diver – he was all complete there. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. Honestly – I love you and Nicole – I do. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. “My sister, Beth, but she’s always been called Baby, she’s coming in a few weeks to take me somewhere; after that I’ll be back here for a last month.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. “Your friend named Deever he’s in a trouble.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

21. “I say he walked, old Warren – he walked.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise IV. Define the type of inversion in the following fragments:

1. With the gray dawn came the newspapers and the early network news. (Th. Harris)

2. Each day, inside Starling a grim knowledge grew: The federal service would never be the same for her again. (Th. Harris)

3. “I’m your boss, ain’t I?”

“Don’t I know it? The hell you raise if I’m a minute late at the office.” (W.S. Maugham)

4. Silent and close they stood, and he could feel her shoulders trembling a little. (F S. Fitzgerald)

5. At first the Bellamy family puzzled her. The men were reliable and she liked them; to Mr. Bellamy especially, with his iron-gray hair and energetic dignity, she took an immediate fancy, once she found that he was born in Kentucky; this made him a link between the old life and the new. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. Like a pale spider crab the hand moves, more by the motion of the fingers than the power of his wasted arm. (Th. Harris)

7. When we meet – we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke’s – we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. (O. Wilde)

8. I forced a smile, and did not answer him, aware now of a stab of panic, an uneasy sickness that could not be controlled. Gone was my excitement, vanished my happy pride. (D. du Maurier)

9. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. (D. du Maurier)

10. “Yes, right you are.” (D. du Maurier)

11. Above my head was the evening star. In the woods beyond the rose-garden the birds were making their last little rustling noises before nightfall. (D. du Maurier)

12. Up and down he walked, up and down across the library floor.

(D. du Maurier)

13. Silently she admired him. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. Between you and me, O’Brien was the worst man on the force, and we have a few choice specimens, believe you me. (J.H. Chase)

15. “Is it right they eat frogs?”

“Of course,” Charley said. “And absolutely delicious they are too.”

(H.E. Bates)

16. From a café at the end of the promenade came the smell of coffee, bitter, strong, deliciously mocking. (H.E. Bates)

17. Evylyn disliked her on the spot, but the husband she rather approved of. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. They rejoiced, for she was a brave raconteuse, but many were the keys turned in sideboard locks that night against the possible defection of little Bobby or Barbara. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. Monsignor Darcy’s house was a n ancient, rambling structure set on a hill overlooking the river, and there lived its owner, between his trips to all parts of the Roman Catholic world, rather like an exiled Stuart king waiting to be called to the rule of his land. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. A brilliant education she had – her youth passed in renaissance glory.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

21. Beyond the inky sea and far up that high, black shadow of a hill lived the Divers. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

22. They sat silent. From Nicole flowed a vast tragic apathy.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise V. Discriminate between stylistic devices based on revaluation (shifts) of syntactical meanings:

1. “You’re sure you want me to come?” “Absolutely, old sport.”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

2. “I’m delighted to see you,” said Gatsby, standing on his porch. “I’m delighted that you dropped in.” As though they cared! (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. Now, wasn’t that a silly dream? (O Henry)

4. Was it always going to be like this? He away ahead of me, with his own moods that I did not share, his secret troubles that I did not know? Would we never be together, he a man and I a woman, standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, with no gulf between us? (D. du Maurier)

5. “The best evening I’ve spent for a long time.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Many thanks for a grand party.”

“I’m so glad.”

“He we are, you see, staying to the bitter end.”

“I’m so glad.”

Was there no other sentence in the English language? (D. du Maurier)

6. Frank was Frith allover again, giving his version of the story, as though it mattered, as though we cared. (D. du Maurier)

7. “Maxim,” I said, “can’t we start all over again? Can’t we begin from today, and face things together?” (D. du Maurier)

8. “Her shadow between us all the time,” he said. “Her damned shadow keeping us from one another. How could I hold you like this, my darling, my little love, with the fear always in my heart that this would happen?” (D. du Maurier)

9. “How could I come to you when I knew you were thinking about Rebecca? How could I ask you to love me when I knew you loved Rebecca still?” (D. du Maurier)

10. “I thought it would remind you of Rebecca,” I said.

“Remind me?” whispered Maxim. “Oh, God, as if I needed reminding.” (D. du Maurier)

11. Two hundred and sixty pounds was an enormous sum to me. I did not know one could pay so much for a cape… How could she accept it? Didn’t she see how it degraded her? Didn’t she see how frightfully vulgar it was of him to give her a thing that cost so much? (W.S. Maugham)

12. “Could we go inside first? There’s something I must tell you.”

“Better not. Come on, I’ll take you home. You can tell me in the car.”

“Please, can’t we go inside for a moment?” (J.H. Chase)

13. “Isn’t he awful?” she cried in helpless despair. “Isn’t he terrible?”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

14. He was still thinking of the look in Caroline’s eyes that morning – the look that seemed to say: “Oh, why couldn’t you have done something about it? Why couldn’t you have been stronger, made me marry you? Don’t you see how sad I am?” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. “That damn old fool!” he cried wildly. “As if I didn’t know!”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. Jeffrey Curtain loved her dark radiance, the white irises of her eyes, the warm, lustrous enthusiasm of her smile.

“Don’t you like her?” he would demand rather excitedly and shyly. “Isn’t she wonderful? Did you ever see –”

“Yes,” they would answer, grinning. “She’s a wonder. You’re lucky.”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. Probably, thought Amory, what he said was: “My God! Aren’t people horrible!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. Immediately he realized the injustice of this. Wasn’t she taking him to a hiding place and wasn’t she returning Wade’s car? Without her he would be in a hell of a fix. (J.H. Chase)

19. “What did this to him?” she asked. “Why does he have to drink?”

Nicole shook her head right and left, disclaiming responsibility for the matter: “So many smart men go to pieces nowadays.”

“And when haven’t they?” Dick Asked. “Smart men play close to the line because they have to – some of them can’t stand it, so they quit.”

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. “Isn’t it true you’re not happy with me any more?” Nicole continued. “Without me you could get to your work again – you could work better if you didn’t worry about me.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

Exercise VI. State the function of detachment and parenthesis:

1. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures – which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people – which was worse. (O. Wilde)

2. I don’t play accurately – anyone can play accurately – but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned sentiment is my forte. I keep science for life. (O. Wilde)

3. The bored haughty face that she turned to the world concealed something – most affectations conceal something eventually, even though they don’t in the beginning – and one day I found what it was. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

4. Daisy went upstairs to wash her face – too late I thought with humiliation of my towels – while Gatsby and I waited on the lawn. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

5. She didn’t answer. Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

6. We were going along with Una driving, Geoffrey in the front, Dad giggling merrily in the boot and me sandwiched between Mum and Wellington in the back when incident happened, horrifying and incredible. (H. Fielding)

7. He was still unwilling to accept such painters as Picasso and Braque – ‘horrors, my dear fellow, horrors’ – whom certain misguided enthusiasts were making such a fuss about, but felt himself at long last justified in extending his patronage to the Impressionists and so adorned his walls with some very pretty pictures. (W.S. Maugham)

8. One day I walked past Miss Bates’s little sanctum Remingtorium, and saw in her place a black-haired unit – unmistakably a person – pounding with each of her forefingers upon the keys. (O Henry)

9. When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised. (O Henry)

10. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of each one of my jokes. (O Henry)

11. Clarice, the daughter of somebody on the estate, a nice quiet well-mannered girl, who, thank heaven, had never been in service before and had no alarming standards. (D. du Maurier)

12. No sooner have I started going out with the man she’d been trying to force me onto for eighteen months (‘Malcolm and Elaine’s son, darling, divorced, terribly lonely and rich’) than I feel like I’m running some kind of Territorial Army obstacle course, scrambling over walls and nets to bring her home a big silver cup with a bow on it. (H. Fielding)

13. Pop, sad and remote at the window, murmured something about he was having a bit of a battle with the elements. (H.E. Bates)

14. When we reached the country club she melted like a chameleon into the – to me – unfamiliar crowd. (F.Sc. Fitzgerald)

15. Armory marked himself a fortunate youth, capable of infinite expansion for good or evil. He did not consider himself a ‘strong char’cter’, but relied on his facility (learn things sorta quick) and his superior mentality (read a lotta deep books). He was proud of the fact that he could never become a mechanical or scientific genius. From no other heights was he debarred. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. It was just incomprehensible to him, he said. He had been thinking of the poker game – absorbed – and the touch on his shoulder had seemed like an attack. (F.S. Fitzgerald)

17. Nhan Lee Quon had appeared by his side, silently and unexpectedly.

(J.H. Chase)

18. Troubled, Rosemary didn’t answer. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. His nose was somewhat pointed and there was never any doubt at whom he was looking or talking – and this is a flattering attention, for who looks at us? – glances fall upon us, curious or disinterested, nothing more.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. Rebecca just rang, asking if I was ‘all right’.

“Oh, poor you. Yes, I saw Peter last night … (Where? What? Why wasn’t I invited?) … and he was telling everyone how upset you were about the wedding. As he said, it is difficult, single women do tend to get desperate as they get older…” (H. Fielding)

Exercise VII. Discriminate between syntactic devices based on patterned or modelled repetition:

1. There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body, There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body and soul alike. The first is called the prince. The second is called the pope. The third is called the people. (O. Wilde)

2. If one plays good music people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk. (O. Wilde)

3. Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors like married men. (O. Wilde)

4. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the bloom is gone. (O. Wilde)

5. It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly. (O. Wilde)

6. Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building. (O. Wilde)

7. The work of art is to dominate the spectator. The spectator is not to dominate the work of art. (O. Wilde)

8. Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast. (O. Wilde)

9. Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. (O. Wilde)

10. The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what men should not have been. The present is what men ought not to be. The future is what artists are. (O. Wilde)

11. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic. (Oscar Wilde)

12. Don’t tell me that you have exhausted life. When a man says that one knows that life has exhausted him. (O. Wilde)

13. When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs. (O. Wilde)

14. All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime. (O. Wilde)

15. It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and through art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. (O. Wilde)

16. All women become like their mothers: that is their tragedy. No man does: that is his. (O. Wilde)

17. The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful. (O. Wilde)

18. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection. (O. Wilde)

19. Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. (O. Wilde)

20. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. (O. Wilde)

21. The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.

(O. Wilde)

22. From the point of view of form the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling the actor’s craft is the type. (O. Wilde)

23. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. (O. Wilde)

24. People teach in order to conceal their ignorance, as people smile in order to conceal their tears. (O. Wilde)

25. The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide. (J. Billings)

26. It is a wise child that knows his own father. It is a wise father that knows his own son. (W. Shakespeare)

27. Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. (G.K. Chesterton)

28. I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

(W. Churchill)

29. ‘Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he’s a gambler.’ Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: ‘He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.’ ‘Fixed the World Series?’ I repeated. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

30. I knew it was a mistake to combine different species of friends, knew it. (H. Fielding)

31. Starling should turn to the cabinets, but she was fixed on the cell. Here she had had the most remarkable encounter of her life. Here she had been startled, shocked, surprised. Here she had heard things about herself so terribly true her heart resounded like a great deep bell. (Th. Harris)

32. There were Romanoffs from Russia, Hapsburgs from Austria, Bourbons from Spain, the two Sicilys, and Parma; there were princes of the House of Windsor and princes of the House of Braganca; there were Royal Highnesses from Sweden and Royal Highnesses from Greece: Elliot entertained the. There were princes and princesses not of royal blood, dukes and duchesses, marquesses and marchionesses, from Austria, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Belgium: Elliot entertained them. In winter the King of Sweden and the King of Denmark made sojourns on the coast; now and then Alfonso of Spain paid a hurried visit: Elliot entertained them.

(W.S. Maugham)

33. I know that every reasonable person would agree that I’ve done the only possible thing. I know that from every practical standpoint, from the standpoint of worldly wisdom, from the standpoint of common decency, from the standpoint of what’s right and wrong, I’ve done what I ought to do. And yet at the bottom of my heart I’ve got an uneasy feeling that if I were better, if I were more disinterested, more unselfish, nobler, I’d marry Larry and lead his life. If I only loved him enough I’d think the world well lost. (W.S. Maugham)

34. “Hasn’t it occurred to you? It seems to me that in what he said to you he indicated it pretty plainly. God.”

“God!” she cried But it was an exclamation of incredulous surprise.

(W.S. Maugham)

35. Her resentment of the very real injustices she had suffered at Krendler’s hands was charged with the anger at her father that she could never, never acknowledge. She could not forgive her father for dying. He had left the family, he had stopped peeling oranges in the kitchen. He had doomed her mother to the commode brush and the pail. He had stopped holding Starling close, his great heart booming like Hannah’s heart as they rode into the night. (Th. Harris)

36. She knew she could not afford to bore him. She knew she must never let him feel that she was a burden or a responsibility. (W.S. Maugham)

37. …I strolled in the gardens, recapturing the memories of my youth. Nothing had changed. They might have been the same students who walked along the gravel paths in pairs, eagerly discussing the writers who excited them. They might have been the same children who trundled the same hoops under the watchful eyes of the same nurses. They might have been the same old men who basked in the sunshine, reading the morning paper. They might have been the same middle-aged women in mourning who sat on the free benches and gossiped with one another about the price of food and the misdeeds of servants. (W.S. Maugham)

38. “I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

39. “Come on! Come on!” he was saying, holding up his fists like a boxer. “I’m thinking Hugh Grant. I’m thinking Elizabeth Hurley. I’m thinking how come two months on they’re still together. I’m thinking how come he gets away with it. That’s it! How does a man with a girlfriend with looks like Elizabeth Hurley have a blow-job from a prostitute on a public highway and get away with it? What happened to hell hath no fury?”

(H. Fielding)

39. “What place is that?” I asked.

“The old Metropole.”

“The old Metropole,” brooded Mr Wolfsheim gloomily. “Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends now gone forever.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

40. The great secret of a successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters. (H. Nicolson)