Commonplace Book

'...She had the grace of silence, of reflection, to a rare degree. Some people found her frightfully dull, but then imagine what "some people" are, it can be said that their disapproval is a distinction that no fairly admirable person should ever be without...'

from To Lamoir, a piece in May Fair by Michael Arlen

Commonplace Book

'...There is Shih-li-p'u, a village of temples. In one of its temples the stair has crumbled away, but, by climbing the wall, we found in an upper room some restful paintings representing rather overdressed persons on fat piebald horses cutting one another's heads off. The optimistic expressions of the severed heads while still in mid-air was a lesson to us all...'

from Yunnan-II, a piece in The Little World by Stella Benson

Commonplace Book

'His eyes were closed against her beauty, else he had seen the sudden smile that touched her beauty, touched it and was going, going, lurked a while in the depths of her eyes like a very small bird in the ferns of love-in-the-mist, and lo! was gone.'

from The Three-Cornered Moon, a piece in May Fair by Michael Arlen

Commonplace Book

"A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre; first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till those excluded from the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned behind gentlemen to take it up, and formed an electric chain of laughter. Each one, as her ear received it, caught up her handkerchief, and laughed, and looked shocked afterwards, or looked shocked and then spouted laughter. The anecdote might have been communicated to the bewildered cavaliers, but coming to a lady of a demurer cast, she looked shocked without laughing, and reproved the female table, in whose breasts it was consigned to burial: but here and there a man's head was seen bent, and a lady's mouth moved, though her face was not turned toward him, and a man's broad laugh was presently heard, while the lady gazed unconsciously before her, and preserved her gravity if she could escape any other lady's eyes; failing in which, handkerchiefs were simultaneously seized, and a second chime arose, till the tickling force subsided to a few chance bursts."

from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith (Chapter XXXVI)

Commonplace Book

'We live in a world of generalisations, which the wise never tire of telling the foolish to mistrust, and with which the foolish never tire of pointing the failures of the wise.'

from The Ace of Cads, a piece in May Fair by Michael Arlen

Commonplace Book

'"...that period [...] when science shall have produced an intellectual aristocracy, is indeed horrible to contemplate. For what despotism is so black as one the mind cannot challenge?"'

from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith (Chapter XXXIV)

Commonplace Book

'"...I see now that the national love of a lord is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one's image, as it were, to bow to it."'

from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel by George Meredith (Chapter XXXIV)