"...those who catch the vision are ready to follow the Lamb wherever He leads, and as they follow, in this spirit of joyful adventure, their path becomes clear before them and they are given power to fulfill their high calling. They are those who have the courage to break through conventionalities, who care not at all what the world thinks of them, because they are entirely taken up with the tremendous reality of Christ."
- Bishop Bardley
"If we cut off their tongues and forbid the Christians speech, they love with their hands, with their feet, and with their eyes, they love always and everywhere until their last respiration. Does anybody know how to take out the power of love from these stupid Christians?"
~ A Romanian prison guard who found both his fulfillment and frustration in torturing Christians.
Ah, no, young sir!
You are too simple. Why you might have said -
Oh, a great many things! Mon dieu, why waste
Your opportunity? For example, thus:
AGGRESSIVE: I, sir, if that nose were mine,
I'd have it amputated - on the spot!
FRIENDLY: How do you drink with such a nose?
You ought to have a cup made specially.
DESCRIPTIVE: 'Tis a rock - a crag - a cape -
A cape? Say rather, a peninsula!
INQUISITIVE: What is that receptacle -
A razor-case or a portfolio?
KINDLY: Ah, do you love the little birds
So much that when they come and sing to you,
You give them this to perch on? INSOLENT:
Sir, when you smoke, the neighbors must suppose
Your chimney is on fire. CAUTIOUS: Take care -
A weight like that might make you topheavy.
THOUGHTFUL: Somebody fetch my parasol -
Those delicate colors fade so in the sun!
PEDANTIC: Does not Aristophanes
Mention a mythologic monster called
Hippocampelephantocamelos?
Surely we have here the original!
FAMILIAR: Well, old torchlight! Hang your hat
Over that chandelier - it hurts my eyes.
ELOQUENT: When it blows, the typhoon howls,
And the clouds darken. DRAMATIC: When it bleeds -
The Red Sea! ENTERPRISING: What a sign
For some perfumer! LYRIC: Hark - the horn
Of Roland calls to summon Charlemagne!
SIMPLE: When do they unveil the monument?
RESPECTFUL: Sir, I recognize in you
A man of parts, a man of prominence
RUSTIC: Hey? What? Call that a nose? Na,na -
I be no fool like what you think I be -
That there's a blue cucumber! MILITARY:
Point against cavalry! PRACTICAL: Why not
A lottery with this for the grand prize?
Or - parodying Faustus in the play -
"Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?"
These, my dear sir, are things you might have said
Had you some tinge of letters, or of wit
To color your discourse. But wit, - not so,
You never had an atom - and of letters,
You need but three to write you down - an A--
Moreover, - if you had the invention, here
Before these folk to make a jest of me -
Be sure you would not then articulate
The twentieth part of half a syllable
Of the beginning! For I say these things
Lightly enough myself, about myself,
But I allow none else to utter them.
I - I am going to be a storm - a flame -
I need to fight whole armies all alone;
I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms; I feel
Too strong to war with mortals - BRING ME GIANTS!
All we need to know is that, in Shakespeare's time, an apostrophe indicated omitted letters, which meant Hamelt could say with sepreme apostrophic confidence: "Fie on't! O fie!"; "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd"; and even "I am too much i' the sun" - the latter, incidentally, a clear case of a writer employing a new-fangled punctuation mark entirely for the sake of it, and condemning countless generations of serious long-haired actos to adopt a knowing expression and say i' - as if this actually added anything to the meaning.Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.
