The Three Impostors quotes

“Farewell to Miss Lally, and to Miss Leicester also,” said the girl, making as she spoke a delicious courtesy. “

Farewell to all occult adventure; the farce is played.

”

Now, mind you, if that were so, I would not grant your conclusion, because

I think the ‘criticism-of-life’ theory is all nonsense

; but I deny your premise. A most singular thing has happened to me tonight.”

“You were wrong to give in so completely,” he said, when I was silent. “A month is too short a time in which to feel one’s way in London.

London, let me tell you, Miss Lally, does not lie open and undefended; it is a fortified place, fossed and double-moated with curious intricacies.

As must always happen in large towns, the conditions of life have become hugely artificial;

“I think you are wrong,” he replied; “there are still, depend upon it, quaint undiscovered countries and continents of strange extent. Ah, Miss Lally, believe me, we stand amidst sacraments and mysteries full of awe, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be.

Life, believe me, is no simple thing, no mass of gray matter and congeries of veins and muscles to be laid naked by the surgeon’s knife; man is the secret which I am about to explore

, and before I can discover him I must cross over weltering seas indeed, and oceans and the mists of many thousand years. You know the myth of the lost Atlantis;

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose it is. Or it maybe a mere coincidence. It never does to be too sure, you know, in these matters.

Coincidence killed the professor.

”

“Your scruples entertain me,” he said. “Perhaps you have not gone very deeply into these questions of ethics. I have been compelled to do so myself, just as I was forced to master a simple system of bookkeeping.

Without bookkeeping, and still more without a system of ethics, it is impossible to conduct a business such as mine.

But I assure you that I am often profoundly saddened as I pass through the crowded streets and watch the world at work by the thought of how few amongst all these hurrying individuals, black hatted, well dressed, educated we may presume sufficiently—how few amongst …

The whirring noise had suddenly changed into a heavy droning. I tore with all my might at the bronze arms, and strove to wrench them apart, but I could do nothing.

The head had slowly bent down, and the green lips were on the lips of Mathias.

Of course I had to attend at the inquest. The letter which had accompanied the figure was found unopened on the study table.

When I have written a phrase which undoubtedly embodies a happy turn of thought, I find it dressed up in feeble commonplace; and when the style is good, it serves only to conceal the baldness of superannuated fancies.

I sweat over my work, Dyson⁠—every finished line means so much agony.

I envy the lot of the carpenter in the side street who has a craft which he understands. When he gets an order for a table, he does not writhe with anguish;

and when the style is good, it serves only to conceal the baldness of superannuated fancies. I sweat over my work, Dyson—every finished line means so much agony.

I envy the lot of the carpenter in the side street who has a craft which he understands.

When he gets an order for a table, he does not writhe with anguish; but if I were so unlucky as to get an order for a book, I think I should go mad.”

Yet, by some sense I cannot define, I knew that what I saw was no bruise at all.

Oh, if human flesh could burn with flame, and if flame could be black as pitch, such was that before me!

Without thought or fashioning of words, gray horror shaped within me at the sight, and in an inner cell it was known to be a brand.

… intention of associating myself with men whose lives are spent in the unspeakably degrading occupation of “editing” classics, befouling the fair margins of the fairest books with idle and superfluous annotation, and doing their utmost to give a lasting disgust of all that is beautiful.

An abbey church turned to the base use of a stable or a bakehouse is a sorry sight; but more pitiable still is a masterpiece spluttered over with the commentator’s pen, and his hideous mark “cf.”

For my part I chose the glorious career of scholar in its ancient sense; I longed to possess encyclopaedic learning, to grow old amongst books, to distil day by day, and year after year, the inmost sweetness of all worthy writings.

I was not rich enough to collect a library, and I was therefore forced to betake myself to the Reading-Room of the British Museum.

O dim, far-lifted and mighty dome, Mecca of many minds, mausoleum of many hopes, sad house where all desires fail.

For there men enter in with hearts uplifted, and dreaming minds, seeing in those exalted stairs a ladder to fame, in that pompous portico the gate of knowledge; and going in, find but vain vanity, and all but in vain.

But there the blood flows thin and cold, and the brain burns adust; there is the hunt of shadows, and the chase of embattled phantoms; a striving against ghosts, and a war that has no victory.

O dome, tomb of the quick; surely in thy galleries where no reverberant voice can call, sighs whisper ever, and mutterings of dead hopes;

and there men’s souls mount like moths towards the flame, and fall scorched and blackened beneath thee, O dim, far-lifted, and mighty dome.

“My dear Mr. Walters,” he replied; “we do not deal in guess work here. It would bore you if I went into all these little details, the cogs and wheels, if I may say so, which move the machine.

Don’t you think it is much more amusing to sit in front of the house and be astonished, than to be behind the scenes and see the mechanism? Better tremble at the thunder, believe me, than see the man rolling the cannon ball.

But, after all, you needn’t bother about the how and why; you have your share to do. Of course, I shall give you full instructions, but a great deal depends on the way the thing is carried out.

I have often heard very young men maintain that style is everything in literature, and I can assure you that the same maxim holds good in our far more delicate profession.

With us style is absolutely everything, and that is why we have friends like yourself.

”