FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
38 matching pages
Page 1 of 21928 · PDF PAGE 140
XXXIX THOROUGHBRED SHE is ugly enough, in all conscience, and yet how delicious she is! Time and Love have set the mark of their claws upon her, and taught her cruelly how much of youth and freshness each minute and each kiss carry away. Verily, she is ugly! She is an ant, a spider, if you will; even a skeleton:but also she is a love-draught, a magistry, a sorcery! Take her all in all, she is exquisite. Time has not been able to destroy the sparkling rhythm of her walk, or the indestructible elegance of her ap- parel. Love has not altered the …
1928 · PDF PAGE 127
… must always be drunk. Everything lies in that; it is the only question worth consider- ing. In order not to feel the horrible burden of time which breaks your shoulders and bows you down to earth, you must intoxicate your- self without truce, but with what? With wine, poetry, or art?As you will; but intoxicate yourself. And if sometimes upon the steps of a pal- ace, or upon the green grass of a moat, or in the sad solitude of your own room, you awake, intoxication already diminished or disappeared, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, o…
1928 · PDF PAGE 20
…n me,the phial of laudanum; and old and terrible mistress; like all mistresses, alas! fer- tile in caresses and in treacheries. Oh yes, Time has reappeared. Time lords it now, and with the ugly oldster has returned all his devilish rout of memories, regrets, spasms, fears, agonies, nightmares, rages, nerve- storms. I swear to you that the seconds now tick off like a mighty and a solemn bell, and each one leaping from the clock cries: I am Life, Life in- tolerable, Life implacable, Life! There is only one second in human life whose mission it…
1928 · PDF PAGE 68
…he crowd of clients was great, and their mid- dle kingdom, placed as it was between man and God, is like us ruled by the terrible law of Time, and of its infinite posterity,days, hours, minutes, and seconds. In good sooth they were flurried as are min- isters on a reception day, or the assistants in the Government pawn-shop when a national festival allows redemptions without interest. I even believe that from time to time they watched the hand of the clock with as much impatience as human judges who, in session since the morning, cannot preven…
1928 · PDF PAGE 57
…re to come and say to me, What are you looking at with such intensity? What do you seek in the eyes of this being? Do you see there the time? Ah, spend-thrift and do-nothing mortal! I should reply unhesitatingly yes, I see the time; it is eternity. Now, Madam, is not that a really meritori- ous madrigal, and as pompous as yourself? In good sooth, I have taken so much pleasure in embroidering this pretentious piece of gallantry that I shall ask you for nothing in return.
1928 · PDF PAGE 56
XVI THE CLOCK THE Chinese can tell the time by looking in the eyes of a cat. One day a missionary, while walking in the suburbs of Nankin, found that he had forgotten his watch, and asked a little boy what the time was. The gutter-snipe of the Flowery Kingdom hesitated at first, then, recollecting himself, he replied, I will find out for you. A minute later he reappeared, holding in his arms a fine big cat, and looking, as the saying is, in the white of its eyes, he unhesitatingly affirmed, It is just a little before noon. This turned out t…
1928 · PDF PAGE 151
…id not feel themselves capable of so stern an action, ex- plicable enough as it was. Then they sent the waiter for fresh bottles to kill time, whose life is so hard; and quicken life, which flows so slowly.
1928 · PDF PAGE 88
gives it an air at once triumphant and idle. Heavy earrings tinkle secretly at her dainty ears. From time to time the sea-breeze lifts her floating skirt by the corner and shows her splendid shining leg, and her foot, like the feet of the marble goddesses that Europe puts into museums, makes a faithful print of its shape on the fine sand, for Dorothy is so prodigiously coquettish that the pleasure of being admired is more to her than the pride of the freed- woman; and although she is free, she walks bare-foot. Thus she moves on, a harmony; happ…
1928 · PDF PAGE 167
…tonythat better half of nothing. There we may take prolonged baths of shadow, while, to amuse us, the Aurora Borealis will send us from time to time its rosy sheaves, like the reflection of the fire-works of Hell.
1928 · PDF PAGE 121
… strings of a little piano that was hung to his neck by a strap, seemed to be laughing at his neighbors complaint, while the third from time to time clashed his cymbals with an extraordinary violence. They were so pleased with themselves that they kept on playing their wild mens music even after the crowd had dispersed; finally they gathered up the half- pence that had been thrown them, slung their luggage on their backs, and went off. I wanted to know where they lived, so I followed them a long way off, right to the edge of the forest, and o…
1928 · PDF PAGE 99
… beloved, his inimitable Fanciullo? it is pleasant and admissible to be- lieve it. The guilty nobles had enjoyed the comedy for the last time; in the same night they were wiped out of life. Since then many a mime, justly appreciated in divers countries, has come to play before the Court of His Highness, but not one has been able to equal the marvellous talent of Fanciullo, nor to obtain the same degree of fa- vour.
1928 · PDF PAGE 179
…crusted with precious stones or a mantle fit to wear at Court in exchange for a well-wrought sonnet or a curious satiric poem. And every time that the poet puts on the painters waistcoat, it makes him think of the good dogs, the philosophic dogs, the Summers of Saint Martin and the beauty of well-ripened women.
1928 · PDF PAGE 13
… the Ego is soon lost)they think, I say, but musi- cally and picturesquely, without quibbles, syl- logisms, and deductions. At the same time these thoughts, whether they arise from myself or dart forth from things external, soon become too intense. En- ergy in pleasure creates uneasiness and posi- tive suffering. My nerves, too highly strung, no
1928 · PDF PAGE 21
…breast of its mount, and its fables head crowned the forehead of the man like one of those horrific helmets by which the warriors of old time hoped to add to the terror of the en- emy. I questioned one of these men, and asked him where they were going. He answered me that neither he nor the others knew anything of this, but that evidently they were going
1928 · PDF PAGE 144
…d have been more philosophical not to speak of it at all, but many witty persons after drinking do not despise commonplace talk. At such times one listens to whoever is speaking as one listens to dance music. Every man, one of them was saying, has passed through the age of Chérubin; I mean the time when, in default of dryads, one kisses trunks of trees without disgust; that is the first grade of love; in the second grade one begins
1928 · PDF PAGE 152
…the wood, he stopped it in the neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that it would be agreeable to him to fire a few shots to kill time. To kill that monster is surely the most ordinary and le- gitimate occupation of all of us, is it not? And he offered politely his hand to his be- loved, delicious, execrable wife, to the myste- rious woman to whom he owes so many pleas- ures, so many sorrows, and perhaps also a great part of his genius. Several balls struck far from the bulls-eye; one of them even buried itself in the ceiling. And as th…
1928 · PDF PAGE 169
…ATH TO THE POOR! FOR a fortnight I had shut myself up in my room, and had surrounded myself with the books that were fashionable at that timeI speak of sixteen or seventeen years ago; I mean the books in which is discussed the art of making everyone happy, wise, and rich, in twenty-four hours. I had then digested swallowed, I suppose I should sayall the lu- cubrations of all these happiness-furnishers, both those who advise the poor to make them- selves slaves, and those who persuade them that they are all dethroned monarchs. You will then n…
1928 · PDF PAGE 117
…ok terrible with their big hollow eyes and flaming cheeks, you cannot help loving them; you are afraid, you want to cry, and yet all the time you are happy. . . . And then, funnier
1928 · PDF PAGE 18
…e life which I now hold, and which I taste minute by minute, second by second. No, there are no more minutes, there are no more seconds. Time has disappeared; it is Eternity which reigns, an eternity of delight.
1928 · PDF PAGE 148
… repeated these words day and night, showing the prettiest teeth in the world, which would have softened and enli- vened you at the same time. I might have made my fortune by showing her at fairs as the Polyphagous Wonder. I fed her well, and yet she left me. For a provision merchant, no doubt? Something of the sortan officer of commissariat, who, by some wizardry, was probably able to supply the poor child with the rations of several soldiers,or so at least I suppose. I, said the fourth, have endured atrocious suffering from the co…