English Books

The Picture of Dorian Gray [Oscar Wilde]

It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about [Lord Hendry to Basil].

Always; That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

In the wild struggle of existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.

The Woman who walked into Doors [Roddy Doyle]

She lit her fag. Her timing is always brilliant. She'd have made a great doctor, Carmel would. You've got-- a cold; just when the poor patient was convinced that she had cancer.

Things come back when I listen. The music drags out memories. That's one thing about my life; it has a great soundtrack.

A thirty-nine-year-old widow-woman with a hollow leg. A wreck of a woman with gaps where her teeth should be and a hole where heart should be. A ruin, a wreck, a failure.