Monocle Quotes

America is subsidizing what is left of the prestige and strength of the once mighty Britain. The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource. Britain's superfluous royalty and nobility now exist by charging tourists to inspect the once baronial castles, and by selling memoirs, perfumes, autographs, titles, and even themselves.

The dandy cleans his monocle every day, a silver monocle with a lens of smoked gold, given him by a beautiful lady but, suddenly overcome with sadness, he has lost the monocle case.

Of the two classes of Prussian officer, the bull-necked and the wasp-waisted, he belonged to the second. Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, 'An unimportant obstacle.

Do they pay you by the hour or what? Norwood said to the monocled peanut face.

It's a monocle," said the captain. "It helps me see you, for which I am eternally grateful. I always say that if I had two I'd make a spectacle of myself.

Most everyone lived twice in those days. They echoed their own steps. They took one step in the real world and one in their space. They saw double, through eyes and monocle displays. They danced through worlds like veils.

It helped that his accent contained a top hat and monocle.

Hey, have you heard that one about the difference between me, Wit, and my loutish cousin, Hilarity? No? Okay, so I walk into a bar, you see, very unassuming, and order a martini. Then the bartender, Hilarity, hauls off and squirts me in the face with a seltzer bottle, ruining my n ice new camel hair suit, dousing my monocle and my watch fob, soaking my cravat. So, do I let him have what for, and blow my top? I do not. I simply say: Sorry, I believe I said 'very dry'.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

(In Austria after VE Day) Sergeant Mercier...dressed in a full German officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to Captain Speirs. Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When troopers brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers snapped a salute and declared, "Sir, we have captured this German officer. What should we do with him?" "Take him out and shoot him," Speirs replied, not looking up. "Sir," Mercier called out, "sir, please, sir, it's me, Sergeant Mercier." "Mercier, get out of that silly uniform," Speirs ordered.

There are five types of laughter to choose from. You can giggle, chuckle, howl, chortle, and, in extreme cases when you’re wearing a monocle, even guffaw.

Er…what's that glass for, sir?' ‘It’s a monocle,’ said the captain. ‘It helps me see you, for which I am eternally grateful. I always say that if I had two I’d make a spectacle of myself.

Gradually, as wine turns to vinegar, Bird's consternation turned to fear, aureoles of fear spread around his eyes like deep rings: he felt himself turning into a frightened monocle monkey.

The other gentleman was Lord Akeldama – an undersized absurdity, all pompadour and no circumstance. He sported a monocle he didn’t need, an accent not his own, and an attitude forever tempting disregard. He was also the deadliest creature Preshea knew.

His wedding gift, clasped round my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat. After the terror, in the early days of the Directory, the aristos who’d escaped the guillotine had an ironic fad of tying a red ribbon round their necks at just the point where the blade would have sliced it through, a red ribbon like the memory of a wound. And his grandmother, taken with the notion, had her ribbon made up in rubies; such a gesture of luxurious defiance! That night at the opera comes back to me even now… the white dress; the frail child within it; and the flashing crimson jewels round her throat, bright as arterial blood. I saw him watching me in the gilded mirrors with the assessing eye of a connoisseur inspecting horseflesh, or even of a housewife in the market, inspecting cuts on the slab. I’d never seen, or else had never acknowledged, that regard of his before, the sheer carnal avarice of it; and it was strangely magnified by the monocle lodged in his left eye. When I saw him look at me with lust, I dropped my eyes but, in glancing away from him, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. And I saw myself, suddenly, as he saw me, my pale face, the way the muscles in my neck stuck out like thin wire. I saw how much that cruel necklace became me. And, for the first time in my innocent and confined life, I sensed in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away.

Beauchamp, one of the kings of the press, and therefore claiming the right of a throne everywhere, was eying everybody through his monocle.

There he is, bent over the page, with a monocle in his right eye, wholly devoted to the noble but rugged task of ferreting out the error. He has already promised himself to write a little monograph in which he will relate the finding of the book and the discovery of the error, if there really is one hidden there. In the end, he discovers nothing and contents himself with possession of the book. He closes it, gazes at it, gazes at it again, goes to the window and holds it in the sun. The only copy! At this moment a Caesar or a Cromwell passes beneath his window, on the road to power and glory. He turns his back, closes the window, stretches in his hammock, and fingers the leaves of the book slowly, lovingly, tasting it sip by sip...An only copy!

Pamela’s husband, Randolph, newly minted member of Parliament, missed the birth. He was in London, in bed with the wife of an Austrian tenor, whose monocled image appeared on cigarette trading cards.

I am almost ashamed to answer,' she said. 'As I have said before, Emily Fox-Seton has become the lodestar of my existence. I cannot live without her. She has walked over to Maundell to make sure that we do not have a dinner-party without fish to-night.' 'She has _walked_ over to Maundell,' said Lord Walderhurst--'after yesterday?' 'There was not a pair of wheels left in the stable,' answered Lady Maria. 'It is disgraceful, of course, but she is a splendid walker, and she said she was not too tired to do it. It is the kind of thing she ought to be given the Victoria Cross for--saving one from a dinner-party without fish.' The Marquis of Walderhurst took up the cord of his monocle and fixed the glass rigidly in his eye. 'It is not only four miles to Maundell,' he remarked, staring at the table-cloth, not at Lady Maria, 'but it is four miles back.

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever seen brought together at any exclusively female ensemble.

The bells on the streetcars ring, buses clatter by honking their horns, stuffed full with people and more people; taxis and fancy private automobiles hum over the glassy asphalt,” he wrote. “The fragrance of heavy perfume floats by. Harlots smile from the artful pastels of fashionable women’s faces; so-called men stroll to and fro, monocles glinting; fake and precious stones sparkle.” Berlin was, he wrote, a “stone desert” filled with sin and corruption and inhabited by a populace “borne to the grave with a smile.

Satan was seen buying a cafe au lait of Friday the thirteenth in the year of the dog. He was wearing a Mexican wrestling mask and a monocle on a gold chain the color of the sun. The lights of the casino filled his good eye. Our days are numbered, our weeks are fading away.

Once it was verified, a tiny augmented reality display extended from the front of the headset and then locked into place in front of my left eye, like a monocle. Several paragraphs of text appeared, floating in the air in front of me, superimposed in the center of my vision:

What's the news of the war?' The doctor twisted the ends of his moustache and said, 'Germany is taking everything, the Italians are playing the fool, the French have run away, the Belgians have been overrun whilst they were looking the other way, the Poles have been charging tanks with cavalry, the Americans have been playing baseball, the British have been drinking tea and adjusting their monocles, the Russians have been sitting on their hands except when voting unanimously to do whatever they are told. Thank God we are out of it. Why don't we turn on the radio?

On the land adjoining La Grenouillère strollers were sauntering under the gigantic trees which help to make this part of the island one of the most delightful parks imaginable. Busty women with peroxided hair and nipped-in waists could be seen, made up to the nines with blood red lips and black-kohled eyes. Tightly laced into their garish dresses they trailed in all their vulgar glory over the fresh green grass. They were accompanied by men whose fashion-plate accessories, light gloves, patent-leather boots, canes as slender as threads and absurd monocles made them look like complete idiots.

noted Philby’s unique sartorial swagger: “The old Secret Service professionals were given to spats and monocles long after they passed out of fashion,” but the new intake of officers could be seen “slouching about in sweaters and gray flannel trousers, drinking in bars and cafés and low dives … boasting of their underworld acquaintances and liaisons. Philby may be taken as a prototype and was indeed, in the eyes of many of them, a model to be copied.” Elliott began to dress like Philby. He even bought the same expensive umbrella from James Smith & Sons of Oxford Street, an umbrella that befitted an establishment man of the world, but one with panache.

What Mostovskoy found most sinister of all was that National Socialism seemed so at home in the camp: rather than peering haughtily at the common people through a monocle, it talked and joked in their own language. It was down-to-earth and plebeian. And it had an excellent knowledge of the mind, language and soul of those it deprived of freedom.

this matter will not go uninvestigated.” He glanced at Madam Bones, who readjusted her monocle and stared back at him, frowning slightly. “I would remind everybody that the behavior of these dementors, if indeed they are not figments of this boy’s imagination, is not the subject of this hearing!” said Fudge. “We are here to examine Harry Potter’s offenses under the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery!” “Of course we are,” said Dumbledore, “but the presence of dementors in that alleyway is highly relevant. Clause seven of the Decree states that magic may be used before Muggles in exceptional circumstances, and as those exceptional circumstances include situations that threaten the life of the wizard or witch himself, or witches, wizards, or Muggles present at the time of the —” “We are familiar with clause seven, thank you very much!” snarled Fudge. “Of course you are,” said Dumbledore courteously. “Then we are in agreement that Harry’s use of the Patronus Charm in these circumstances falls precisely into the category of exceptional circumstances it describes?” “If there were dementors, which I doubt —” “You have heard from an eyewitness,” Dumbledore interrupted. “If you still doubt her truthfulness, call her back, question her again. I am sure she would not object.” “I — that — not —” blustered Fudge, fiddling with the papers before him. “It’s — I want this over with today, Dumbledore!” “But naturally, you would not care how many times you heard from a witness, if the alternative was a serious miscarriage of justice,” said Dumbledore.

Our quick tour through the many dimensions of cognitive and emotional dysfunction makes it plain why the practice of psychiatry has changed so profoundly over the past thirty years. The familiar caricature of the bearded and monocled Freudian analyst probing his reclining patient for memories of toilet training gone awry and parentally directed lust is now an anachronism, as is the professional practice of that mostly empty and confabulatory art. How such an elaborate theory could have become so widely accepted—on the basis of no systematic evidence or critical experiments, and in the face of chronic failures of therapeutic intervention in all of the major classes of mental illness (schizophrenia, mania and depression)—is something that sociologists of science and popular culture have yet to fully explain.

As I glanced at the phraseology of the research report, dull and unfathomable to outsiders like me, I thought that if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don't act like Blofeld--monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about boring, impenetrable people. ...If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

In the very middle of the front row sat Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic. Fudge was a portly man who often sported a lime-green bowler hat, though today he had dispensed with it; he had dispensed, too, with the indulgent smile he had once worn when he spoke to Harry. A broad, square-jawed witch with very short grey hair sat on Fudge’s left; she wore a monocle and looked forbidding. On Fudge’s right was another witch, but she was sitting so far back on the bench that her face was in shadow.

The July sun blazed in the middle of the sky and the atmosphere was gay and carefree, while in the windless air not a leaf stirred in the poplars and willows lining the banks of the river. In the distance ahead, the conspicuous bulk of Mont-Valérien loomed, rearing the ramparts of its fortifications in the glare of the sun. On the right, the gentle slopes of Louveciennes, following the curve of the river, formed a semi-circle within which could be glimpsed, through the dense and shady greenery of their spacious lawns, the white-painted walls of weekend retreats. On the land adjoining La Grenouillère strollers were sauntering under the gigantic trees which help to make this part of the island one of the most delightful parks imaginable. Busty women with peroxided hair and nipped-in waists could be seen, made up to the nines with blood red lips and black-kohled eyes. Tightly laced into their garish dresses they trailed in all their vulgar glory over the fresh green grass. They were accompanied by men whose fashion-plate accessories, light gloves, patent-leather boots, canes as slender as threads and absurd monocles made them look like complete idiots.

was lack of that living spirit of brotherhood and solidarity which had made it possible for Otto Braun, Social-Democratic Premier of the Prussian state, and Karl Severing, Minister of the Interior, to bow to the threats of monocled aristocrats, and slink off to their villas without making the least effort to rouse the people to defend their republic and the liberties it guaranteed them.

Les plus sensibles et romantiques nous proposeront un capitalisme à visage humain. Dites-moi ça sans rire. Le capitalisme, c'est comme le fascisme, mais avec des gants blancs. Aussi meurtrier, mais plus raffiné. C'est comme Luka Rocco Magnotta avec un monocle. C'est se faire exploiter avec le sourire à 15 piasses de l'heure, se faire fouetter par quelqu'un qui te vouvoie.

Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, “An unimportant obstacle.

The combatants, ‘monocled and bespatted’, mounted a horse-drawn carriage and rode in triumph down Constitution Hill, the Mall and Trafalgar Square. Speaking as imperial grand prior of the League, Hamilton reportedly told journalists that the organisation ‘views with unabashed antipathy all forms of democracy, especially the referendum’. ‘We oppose anything that is common, whether it be consultation of the common people or the Common Market.

The sun has set forever on that monocled, pith-helmeted resident colonialist, sipping tea with his delicate lady in the non-white colonies being systematically robbed of every valuable resource.

There’s a giant homosexual squid downtown wearing a smoking jacket and monocle. He’s destroyed half the dock and the Mayfair Hotel!’ the cop said to Mr. Google.

Science n’ Shit in a Hip-Hop Style with Stephen Hawking (Kick-snare, kick-kick snare). ‘Let me tell you my plan for the human race, well I would but I can’t, ‘Cos I can’t move me face, So my computerised voice is how I’ll go, I type with me eye to keep the flow We’re all gonna go live in outer space Where zero gravity will stop me dribbling all over the place I’ll tell y’all how I’ll get there: With some rockets built into me special wheel chair The moons of Jupiter, in perfect animation We’ll all live in a huge space station I’ll be able to dance and chase all the fanny And finally get me end away with me nanny.’ Science n’ Shit in a Hip-Hop Style with Stephen Hawking II ‘From the moons of Ganymede, Io & Titan, I’ll tell y’all somethin’ that’s sure to enlighten In space, there are galaxies nebula & stars And dying suns that are going super no-va But no anomalies can compare, To how much I wanna run my fingers through your hair Sir Patrick Moore, a true space oracle, With your knowledge of cheats and gorgeous monocle I’m coming out as gay, and I don’t give a hoot I’m the first fuckin’ vegetable that turned into a fruit Word.

SOLDE (Pour Aimé Césaire) J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule dans leurs souliers dans leurs smoking dans leur plastron dans leur faux-col dans leur monocle dans leur melon J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule avec mes orteils qui ne sont pas faits pour transpirer du matin jusqu'au soir qui déshabille avec l'emmaillotage qui m'affaiblit les membres et enlève à mon corps sa beauté de cache-sexe J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule avec mon cou en cheminée d'usine avec ces maux de tête qui cessent chaque fois que je salue quelqu'un J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule dans leurs salons dans leurs manières dans leurs courbettes dans leur multiple besoin de singeries J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule avec tout ce qu'ils racontent jusqu'à ce qu'ils vous servent l'après-midi un peu d'eau chaude et des gâteaux enrhumés J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule avec les théories qu'ils assaisonnent au goût de leurs besoins de leurs passions de leurs instincts ouverts la nuit en forme de paillasson J'ai l'impression d'être ridicule parmi eux complice parmi eux souteneur parmi eux égorgeur les mains effroyablement rouges du sang de leur ci-vi-li-sa-tion

Miss Princeton is . . .” He searched for a way to describe her. “Reckless.” “Reckless?” The word escaped all four men in perfect harmony. He sighed. It wasn’t like him to talk about personal matters. Drawing attention to himself was not his style. Back home in Phoenix people expected their ministers to be dignified and sedate. At age thirty, he’d served his church well. He could only imagine what his congregation would say if they knew how their esteemed leader bared his soul to a group of near strangers. “Maybe that’s not the right word but . . .” He couldn’t think of another. “She taught our church ladies to play rounders.” The eye behind the monocle never wavered from its examination of him. “Far as I know, rounders isn’t a sin. Why are you all riled up?

I looked him right in his eyes and I said, “I don’t like you, Cyclops.” Then I spit on his monocle and left.

And opposite Jacques sat Karl Lagerfeld, German ready-to-wear designer, lavish in wing collar and monocle, a fashion force in the making.

Movie producers have a lot to answer for, again. Part of the prejudice lies in the way fighting is portrayed in movies. More often than not the star Martial Arts fighter is cast as an individual of some Asian descent, while the villain – a nefarious Englishman - sits in a mansion giving orders. I know several excellent English Martial Artists and not one of them wears a monocle or has attempted to take over the world. Yet.

The Monocle restaurant—a well-known watering hole for the denizens of Capitol Hill—was only a few blocks from the Dirksen Building and it was too nice a day to take a cab, so they walked.

I sneak quietly up the stairs and toward my door. It’s not very late, but I don’t want to arouse Cyclops Eye next door. I’ve stopped looking as I walk past, but it’s difficult not to notice her window open just a few inches and her sitting right next to it, ready at a moment’s notice to give me her big one-eyed look. Maybe I should get her a monocle for Christmas, so she can make more of a statement.

...if you have the ambition to become a villain, the first thing you should do is learn to be impenetrable. Don’t act like Blofeld—monocled and ostentatious. We journalists love writing about eccentrics. We hate writing about impenetrable, boring people. It makes us look bad: the duller the interviewee, the duller the prose. If you want to get away with wielding true, malevolent power, be boring.

I may be wrong,” said Dumbledore pleasantly, “but I am sure that under the Wizengamot Charter of Rights, the accused has the right to present witnesses for his or her case? Isn’t that the policy of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Madam Bones?” he continued, addressing the witch in the monocle.

The politicians—one with a monocle, another with a carnation in his buttonhole, and a third with a cane—cornered Miss Morgan. I wondered what that was like, to have people press themselves upon you, always wanting something. I decided that being a nobody wasn’t a bad thing.

The cats multiplied. New litters hit their first heat and inbred. Red Fox corralled them like a stout colonel with a monocle and declared to the other hounds that this was his territory. Most of the dogs shoved off after a day or two. But the cats remained and overran our porch, and as the spring warmed, so came fleas and the starving mews of wormy felines badly in need of a vet. One of my blog readers donated supplies. The stench of urine rose with the morning dew.

Look. This is creative problem solving.” But he was still laughing. “Can I get a monocle, too? And a puppy nose and some whiskers?” “Put your pants on,” I said, lacing my voice with irritation. But he was pretty irresistible. I felt an urge to laugh, too.

If my friend is more on top of global affairs, urbanism, culture, and design than I am, it’s because he has a Monocle subscription.

And when nothing but my scarlet, palpitating core remained, I saw, in the mirror, the living image of an etching by Rops from the collection he had shown me... the child with her sticklike limbs, naked but for her button boots, her gloves, shielding her face with her hand as though her face were the last repository of her modesty; and the old, monocled lecher who examined her, limb by limb. He in his London tailoring; she, bare as a lamb chop. Most pornographic of all confrontations. And so my purchaser unwrapped his bargain.

And when nothing but my scarlet, palpitating core remained, I saw, in the mirror, the living image of an etching by Rops from the collection he had shown me... the child with her sticklike limbs, naked but for her button boots, her gloves, shielding her face with her hand as though her face were the last repository of her modesty; and the old, monocled lecher who examined her, limb by limb. He in his London tailoring; she, bare as a lamb chop. Most pornographic of all confrontations. And so my purchaser unwrapped his bargain.

Through positivity and optimism, we can acheive almost anything our dreams may intially inspire!

THIS IS A TRAP, SOPHIE realized. But it didn’t seem to be the Neverseen’s doing. Somehow, some way, Keefe had set this up. So what was his plan? And why hadn’t he told her?! “I must say”—Fintan raised his hands, ready to call down flames—“you’ve really outdone yourself, Mr. Sencen. Miss Foster is an excellent addition to our bargain.” Keefe jumped in front of Sophie. “She’s not supposed to be here.” Brant’s scarred smile crawled straight out of Sophie’s nightmares. “Then we’ll consider her an excellent bonus.” Sophie hadn’t noticed that Alvar had vanished until she felt his arms wrap around her. She screamed and thrashed and kicked, but he was too strong. He pinned her arms behind her with one hand while he ripped her Black Swan pendant off her neck and tossed it to Brant. “Let’s leave the fires to the professionals, shall we?” Brant asked as he crushed the monocle under his heavy black boot. “I’ll take yours, too.” Keefe jerked away as Brant yanked the pendant off his neck. “Must we really do this again?” Brant asked, snapping his fingers and creating a sphere of Everblaze. “Not if you let her go,” Keefe said. “I’m finding it rather hard to believe your commitment,” Fintan told him. “Surely you’ve realized that switching sides means betraying your friends.” Sophie’s stomach switched to vomit mode. “What is he talking about, Keefe?” “You can’t guess?” Brant asked. She was developing some terrifying theories—but none of them made sense. Or they didn’t until Fintan asked Keefe, “Where’s the cache?

Up ahead, a shadowy building loomed. It looked more like a gothic cathedral than a school, with grossly elongated black spires jutting into the night sky. They unnerved Tony. Somehow, they resembled horns silhouetted against the moon. He counted ten of these protuberances, each with an arrowhead as its tip. Tony found the structure difficult to make his mind up about. It was beautiful, that was for sure, but its beauty was intermingled with an ill-masked sense of horror. The black exterior had a pair of peculiar projections on either side of the building resembling a bat's wings. His feet on concrete now, he pulled up to a webbed gate— also reminiscent of a bats with the hind, bone-like array supporting an oily black, translucent texture. He saw some girls a few dozen feet from the gate at the entrance of the building. They were garbed in black sailor fuku skirts too high above the knees to facilitate concentration upon anything academic. The males were also dressed in black corduroy pants and black dress shirt. A throng by the massive doors stared holes through them as they approached. Up close, he noted some of the girls were quite pale, sporting piercings and tattoos on their necks and hands. He even saw one with a spider web inked on the side of her face. When he followed Silver Man into the building— his toes squeaking in his soaked shoes—he was awed by the aesthetics. There was a rather large gathering in the hall that looked more like large shadows with all the children in black. Tony felt out of place in his brown pants and long sleeved white shirt. The hall was bleak; the only source of illumination was a pair of horizontal cylindrical lamps set upon wooden rafters near the ceiling. Silver Man proceeded toward the platform where Tony could just make out the form of a thin man donning a monocle. He looked like an old scientist. He was sitting cross-legged, stroking his chest-length pearl white beard. The man appeared to be watching them as they progressed through the hall. Then he stood as they neared the stage, now caressing his bald head. He had a monkish appearance. His black robe— quite similar to the one Silver Man wore— was tied at the waist by a red cloth. The bald, monocled man extended a spindly hand which Silver Man gave a firm tug before leaning in and whispering something. The man nodded, turning to Tony. Tony flinched as he regarded him through his peculiar eyewear: a single gold-rimmed, circular lens. He now folded himself into an accentuated bow. "Listen up folks!" he shouted. Tony saw the students rushing inside the castle pell-mell, summoned by the voice of the bespectacled man. “We have a late recruit ladies and gentlemen,” the man said. His voice was much stronger than his thin frame suggested. “Join me as I induct him into the hallowed spirit of Imajinaereum.

Fitz and Biana were right behind him, with Keefe a few steps farther back. They froze when they spotted Coiffe. “Is this guy bothering you?” Fitz asked. “Is that a guy?” Dex added. “He says he’s with the Black Swan,” Sophie told them. “Couldn’t anyone say that?” Fitz asked. Coiffe rolled his eyes and pulled a monocle pendant like theirs out of the curls of his fur. “Happy now?” “Just when I thought this place couldn’t get any weirder,” Biana mumbled. Dex moved closer to Coiffe and squinted at his fur. “What’d you do, mix a bunch of Curly-dew with Macho-Macho and a couple drops of Body Warmer?” “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if your father’s ridiculous store was involved,” Coiffe muttered. “Only Kesler Dizznee would waste time figuring out how to give someone a fur coat.” Yeah . . . Sophie definitely wasn’t going to be a fan of Coiffe. “My father is one of the most talented alchemists in our world,” Dex snapped. “He is,” Coiffe agreed. “But even you must admit he gravitates toward the absurd.” “That’s intentional,” Sophie told him. Kesler kept Slurps and Burps strange to make the stuck-up nobility uncomfortable. “So wait,” Keefe jumped in. “Are you naked right now? Because I think I speak for everyone when I say: Yuck.

Behind them, filling the roads that converged on Liège came the infantry of Emmich’s assault force, rank after rank. Only the red regimental number painted on helmet fronts broke the monotony of field-gray Horse-drawn field artillery followed. The new leather of boots and harness creaked. Companies of cyclists sped ahead to seize road crossings and farmhouses and lay telephone wires. Automobiles honked their way through, carrying monocled Staff officers with orderlies holding drawn pistols sitting up front and trunks strapped on behind. Every regiment had its field kitchens on wheels, said to be inspired by one the Kaiser had seen at Russian maneuvers, with fires kindled and cooks standing up stirring the stew as the wagons moved. Such was the perfection of the equipment and the precision of the marching that the invaders appeared to be on parade.

A century ago the British craze for the monocle gave to the wearer the power of the camera to fix people in a superior stare, as if they were objects. Erich von Stroheim did a great job with the monocle in creating the haughty Prussian officer. Both monocle and camera tend to turn people into things, and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars and matinee idols are put in the public domain by photography. They become dreams that money can buy. They can be bought and hugged and thumbed more easily than public prostitutes.

If you are the kind of person who collapses into the bed after you climax, while your partner's orgasm is a brief postcoital afterthought, you're an asshole. I'm looking mostly at the menfolk, though I know very well shitheads abound in every size, color, and shape. It takes two to tango, Frank, so get back down there and make sure Vanessa isn't left high and dry. And if you can't figure out how to get things wet and wild, don't be afraid to ask the young lady what yanks her crank. A simple heartfelt query such as, "Hello, darling, I would love so much to help usher you to the absolute zenith of sexual climax. Is there anything in particular you'd like me to do that would precipitate this lovely event?" Bonus points if you're wearing a monocle and a tartan wool cape.

The Marquis de Forestelle's monocle was minute and rimless, and, by enforcing an incessant and painful contraction of the eye over which it was incrusted like a superfluous cartilage, the presence of which there was inexplicable and its substance unimaginable, it gave to his face a melancholy refinement, and led women to suppose him capable of suffering terribly when in love. But that of M. de Saint-Candé, girdled, like Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the centre of gravity of a face which composed itself afresh every moment in relation to the glass, while his thrusting red nose and swollen sarcastic lips endeavoured by their grimaces to rise to the level of the steady flame of wit that sparkled in the polished disk, and saw itself preferred to the most ravishing eyes in the world by the smart, depraved young women whom it set dreaming of artificial charms and a refinement of sensual bliss; and then, behind him, M. de Planck, who with his huge carp's head and goggling eyes moved slowly up and down the stream of festive gatherings, unlocking his great mandibles at every moment as though in search of his orientation, had the air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium, a part intended to suggest the whole which recalled to Swann, a fervent admirer of Giotto's Vices and Virtues at Padua, that Injustice by whose side a leafy bough evokes the idea of the forests that enshroud his secret lair.

NCE upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales. He was six feet four, and forty-six, and even colder than he thought he was. One eye wore a velvet patch; the other glittered through a monocle, which made half his body seem closer to you than the other half. He had lost one eye when he was twelve, for he was fond of peering into nests and lairs in search of birds and animals to maul. One afternoon, a mother shrike had mauled him first. His nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes. Wickedly scheming, he would limp and cackle through the cold corridors of the castle, planning new impossible feats for the suitors of Saralinda to perform. He did not wish to give her hand in marriage, since her hand was the only warm hand in the castle. Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle. Travelers and mariners would look up at the gloomy castle on the lonely hill and say, “Time lies frozen there. It’s always Then. It’s never Now.