“
[Jason] faltered when he looked at Leo, who was mimicking taking notes with an air pencil.
“Go on, Professor Grace!” he said, wide-eyed. “I wanna get an A on the test.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus, #4))
“
He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
“
Minerva, kindly go to Hagrid's house, where you will find a large black dog sitting in the pumpkin patch. Take the dog to my office, tell him I will be with him shortly, then come back here.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
“
But Hadley understood. It wasn't that she was meant to read them all. Maybe someday she would, but for now, it was more the gesture itself. He was giving her the most important thing he could, the only way he knew how. He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
“
My father was a history professor, and my mother a housewife—"
She married a house?
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon
“
In great misfortunes, people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love--if once one has ever fallen in.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
I remember one time I heard this English professor asking the class what the world's scariest noise is. Is it a man crying out in pain? A woman's scream of terror? A gunshot? A baby crying? And the professor shakes his head and says, 'No, the scariest noise is, you're all alone in your dark house, you know you're all alone, you know that there is no chance anyone else is home or within miles—and then, suddenly, from upstairs, you hear the toilet flush.
”
”
Harlan Coben (Caught)
“
And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own individual lives.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Professor, why couldn't we just Apparate directly into your old colleague's house?'
'Because it would be quite as rude as kicking down the front door,' said Dumbledore. 'Courtesy dictates that we offer fellow wizards the opportunity of denying us entry.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
“
A man long accustomed to admire his wife in general, seldom pauses to admire her in a particular gown or attitude, unless his attention is directed to her by the appreciative gaze of another man.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Ed Sanders chuckled. “The ivy-covered walls at Columbia University have limited the depth of your insight, Professor Gilmore. The rehearsal flight is a ploy cooked up in the White House to take advantage of Cindy Divine’s immense popularity.
”
”
Shafter Bailey (Cindy Divine: The Little Girl Who Frightened Kings)
“
Theoretically he knew that life is possible, may even be pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Rachel looked annoyed. “Do you think he’s embarrassed by us?”
“More likely he’s embarrassed by her,” said Gabriel. “She’s probably a stripper.”
“Professors in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Rachel glared at her brother and stormed out.
”
”
Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Rapture (Gabriel's Inferno, #2))
“
I was on a mission. I had to learn to comfort myself, to see what others saw in me and believe it. I needed to discover what the hell made me happy other than being in love. Mission impossible.
When did figuring out what makes you happy become work? How had I let myself get to this point, where I had to learn me..? It was embarrassing. In my college psychology class, I had studied theories of adult development and learned that our twenties are for experimenting, exploring different jobs, and discovering what fulfills us. My professor warned against graduate school, asserting, "You're not fully formed yet. You don't know if it's what you really want to do with your life because you haven't tried enough things." Oh, no, not me.." And if you rush into something you're unsure about, you might awake midlife with a crisis on your hands," he had lectured it. Hi. Try waking up a whole lot sooner with a pre-thirty predicament worm dangling from your early bird mouth.
"Well to begin," Phone Therapist responded, "you have to learn to take care of yourself. To nurture and comfort that little girl inside you, to realize you are quite capable of relying on yourself. I want you to try to remember what brought you comfort when you were younger."
Bowls of cereal after school, coated in a pool of orange-blossom honey. Dragging my finger along the edge of a plate of mashed potatoes. I knew I should have thought "tea" or "bath," but I didn't. Did she want me to answer aloud?
"Grilled cheese?" I said hesitantly.
"Okay, good. What else?"
I thought of marionette shows where I'd held my mother's hand and looked at her after a funny part to see if she was delighted, of brisket sandwiches with ketchup, like my dad ordered. Sliding barn doors, baskets of brown eggs, steamed windows, doubled socks, cupcake paper, and rolled sweater collars. Cookouts where the fathers handled the meat, licking wobbly batter off wire beaters, Christmas ornaments in their boxes, peanut butter on apple slices, the sounds and light beneath an overturned canoe, the pine needle path to the ocean near my mother's house, the crunch of snow beneath my red winter boots, bedtime stories. "My parents," I said. Damn. I felt like she made me say the secret word and just won extra points on the Psychology Game Network. It always comes down to our parents in therapy.
”
”
Stephanie Klein (Straight Up and Dirty)
“
My dear," he sighed when the lights were turned on and they both looked older, "it's been a mistake, our having a family and writing histories and getting middle-aged. We should have been picturesquely shipwrecked together when we were young.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
I was thinking", he answered absently, "about Euripides; how, when he was an old man, he went and lived in a cave by the sea, and it was thought queer at the time. It seems that houses had become insupportable to him. I wonder whether it was because he had observed women so closely all his life.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Yes, it was possible that the little world, on its voyage among all the stars, might become like that; a boat on which one could travel no longer, from which one could no longer look up and confront those bright rings of revolution.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
The man he was now, the personality his friends knew, had begun to grow strong during adolescence, during the years when he was always consciously or unconsciously conjugating the verb "to love"-- in society and solitude, with people, with books, with the sky and open country, in the lonesomeness of crowded city streets.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Men learn to regard rape as a moment in time; a discreet episode with a beginning, middle, and end. But for women, rape is thousands of moments that we fold into ourselves over a lifetime.
Its' the day that you realize you can't walk to a friend's house anymore or the time when your aunt tells you to be nice because the boy was just 'stealing a kiss.' It's the evening you stop going to the corner store because, the night before, a stranger followed you home. It's the late hour that a father or stepfather or brother or uncle climbs into your bed. It's the time it takes you to write an email explaining that you're changing your major, even though you don't really want to, in order to avoid a particular professor. It's when you're racing to catch a bus, hear a person demand a blow job, and turn to see that it's a police officer. It's the second your teacher tells you to cover your shoulders because you'll 'distract the boys, and what will your male teachers do?' It's the minute you decide not to travel to a place you've always dreamed about visiting and are accused of being 'unadventurous.' It's the sting of knowing that exactly as the world starts expanding for most boys, it begins to shrink for you. All of this goes on all day, every day, without anyone really uttering the word rape in a way that grandfathers, fathers, brothers, uncles, teachers, and friends will hear it, let alone seriously reflect on what it means.
”
”
Soraya Chemaly (Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger)
“
I do love it. But I want you two to have it. Today, you taught me- no, you taught all of us- an important lesson. It is a dark day in the deep sea when we cause innocent creatures to suffer. The professor said we can conquer our fears through knowledge. But you taught us that our fears can best be conquered through compassion. Even we scientists must never forget to have compassion for all living creatures. My compassion for the little creature that once lived in this shell made me very happy.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Dark Day in the Deep Sea (Magic Tree House, #39))
“
He was giving her the most important thing he could, the only way he knew how. He was a professor, a lover of stories, and he was building her a library in the same way other men might build their daughters houses.
”
”
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
“
Got Potter’?” said Professor McGonagall sharply. “What do you mean, ‘got Potter’?”
“He told us Potter might try and get inside Ravenclaw Tower, and to send for him if we caught him!”
“Why would Harry Potter try to get inside Ravenclaw Tower? Potter belongs in my House!”
Beneath the disbelief and anger, Harry heard a little strain of pride in her voice, and affection for Minerva McGonagall gushed up inside him.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
Moriarty smiled his adder’s smile.
And I relaxed. I knew. My destiny and his wound together. It was a sensation I’d never got before upon meeting a man. When I’d had it from women, the upshot ranged from disappointment to attempted murder. Understand me, Professor James Moriarty was a hateful man, the most hateful, hateable, creature I have ever known, not excluding Sir Augustus and Kali’s Kitten and the Abominable Bloody Snow-Bastard and the Reverend Henry James Prince. He was something man-shaped that had crawled out from under a rock and moved into the manor house. But, at that moment, I was his, and I remain his forever. If I am remembered, it will be because I knew him. From that day on, he was my father, my commanding officer, my heathen idol, my fortune and terror and rapture.
”
”
Kim Newman (Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles)
“
There are times when one's vitality is too high to be clouded, too elastic to stay down.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Something, somewhere, somewhen, must have happened differently...
PETUNIA EVANS married Michael Verres, a Professor of Biochemistry at Oxford.
HARRY JAMES POTTER-EVANS-VERRES grew up in a house filled to the brim with books. He once bit a math teacher who didn't know what a logarithm was. He's read Godel, Escher, Bach and Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases and volume one of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. And despite what everyone who's met him seems to fear, he doesn't want to become the next Dark Lord. He was raised better than that. He wants to discover the laws of magic and become a god.
HERMIONE GRANGER is doing better than him in every class except broomstick riding.
DRACO MALFOY is exactly what you would expect an eleven-year-old boy to be like if Darth Vader were his doting father.
PROFESSOR QUIRRELL is living his lifelong dream of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, or as he prefers to call his class, Battle Magic. His students are all wondering what's going to go wrong with the Defense Professor this time.
DUMBLEDORE is either insane, or playing some vastly deeper game which involved setting fire to a chicken.
DEPUTY HEADMISTRESS MINERVA MCGONAGALL needs to go off somewhere private and scream for a while.
Presenting:
HARRY POTTER AND THE METHODS OF RATIONALITY
You ain't guessin' where this one's going.
”
”
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
“
Race scholars use the term white supremacy to describe a sociopolitical economic system of domination based on racial categories that benefits those defined and perceived as white. This system of structural power privileges, centralizes, and elevates white people as a group. If, for example, we look at the racial breakdown of the people who control our institutions, we see telling numbers in 2016–2017:
- Ten richest Americans: 100 percent white (seven of whom are among the ten richest in the world)
- US Congress: 90 percent white
- US governors: 96 percent white
- Top military advisers: 100 percent white
- President and vice president: 100 percent white
- US House Freedom Caucus: 99 percent white
- Current US presidential cabinet: 91 percent white
- People who decide which TV shows we see: 93 percent white
- People who decide which books we read: 90 percent white
- People who decide which news is covered: 85 percent white
- People who decide which music is produced: 95 percent white
- People who directed the one hundred top-grossing films of all time, worldwide: 95 percent white
- Teachers: 82 percent white
- Full-time college professors: 84 percent white
- Owners of men’s professional football teams: 97 percent white
These numbers are not describing minor organizations. Nor are these institutions special-interest groups. The groups listed above are the most powerful in the country. These numbers are not a matter of “good people” versus “bad people.” They represent power and control by a racial group that is in the position to disseminate and protect its own self-image, worldview, and interests across the entire society.
”
”
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
“
man can do anything if he wishes to enough, St. Peter believed. Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement. He
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Oh, no, sir, no,' said Dobby, looking suddenly serious. 'Tis part of the house-elf's enslavement, sir. We keeps their secrets and our silence, sir, we upholds the family's honour, and we never speaks ill of them - though Professor Dumbledore told Dobby he does not insist upon this. Professor Dumbledore said we is free to - to' Dobby looked suddenly nervous, and beckoned Harry closer. Harry bent forwards. Dobby whispered, 'He said we is free to call him a - a barmy old codger if we likes, sir!' Dobby gave a frightened sort of giggle.
”
”
J.K. Rowling
“
It struck him that the seasons sometimes gain by being brought into the house, just as they gain by being brought into painting, and into poetry. The hand, fastidious and bold which selected and placed - it was that which made the difference. In Nature there is no selection.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Dr. Y. Hiraiwa, professor of Hiroshima University of Literature and Science, and one of my church members, was buried by the bomb under the two storied house with his son, a student of Tokyo University. Both of them could not move an inch under tremendously heavy pressure. And the house already caught fire. His son said, ‘Father, we can do nothing except make our mind up to consecrate our lives for the country. Let us give Banzai to our Emperor.’ Then the father followed after his son, ‘Tenno-heika, Banzai, Banzai, Banzai!’ . . . In thinking of their experience of that time Dr. Hiraiwa repeated, ‘What a fortunate that we are Japanese! It was my first time I ever tasted such a beautiful spirit when I decided to die for our Emperor.
”
”
John Hersey (Hiroshima)
“
The assault on education began more than a century ago by industrialists and capitalists such as Andrew Carnegie. In 1891, Carnegie congratulated the graduates of the Pierce College of Business for being “fully occupied in obtaining a knowledge of shorthand and typewriting” rather than wasting time “upon dead languages.” The industrialist Richard Teller Crane was even more pointed in his 1911 dismissal of what humanists call the “life of the mind.” No one who has “a taste for literature has a right to be happy” because “the only men entitled to happiness… is those who are useful.” The arrival of industrialists on university boards of trustees began as early as the 1870s and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business offered the first academic credential in business administration in 1881. The capitalists, from the start, complained that universities were unprofitable. These early twentieth century capitalists, like heads of investment houses and hedge-fund managers, were, as Donoghue writes “motivated by an ethically based anti-intellectualism that transcended interest in the financial bottom line. Their distrust of the ideal of intellectual inquiry for its own sake, led them to insist that if universities were to be preserved at all, they must operate on a different set of principles from those governing the liberal arts.
”
”
Chris Hedges (Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle)
“
I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great Hall in twenty minutes, also,” said Professor McGonagall. “If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within this castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill.” “Minerva!” he said, aghast. “The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties,” interrupted Professor McGonagall. “Go and wake your students, Horace.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
The town of Split grew up around…” He faltered when he looked at Leo, who was mimicking taking notes with an air pencil. “Go on, Professor Grace!” he said, wide-eyed. “I wanna get an A on the test.” “Shut up, Leo.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus, #4))
“
Knightley Academy stood out against the moonlight in silhouette, a ramshackle collection of chimneys, turrets and gables. Both boys stopped to take in the sight of the manicured lawns and tangled woods, the soaring chapel and the ivy-covered brick of the headmaster's house. They were home. For this, Henry felt, was home. Not some foreign castle encircled by guard towers, but this cozy, bizarre assortment of buildings with its gossiping kitchen maids and eccentric professors and clever students.
”
”
Violet Haberdasher (The Secret Prince (Knightley Academy, #2))
“
Is that where—?’ whispered Professor McGonagall.
‘Yes,’ said Dumbledore. ‘He'll have that scar for ever.’
‘Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?’
‘Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in useful. I have one myself above my left knee which is a perfect map of the London underground. Well—give him here, Hagrid—we'd better get this over with.’ Dumbledore took Harry in his arms and turned towards the Dursleys’ house.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
“
So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks.
”
”
Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast (Gormenghast, #2))
“
If words had cost money, Tom couldn't have used them more sparingly. The adjectives were purely descriptive, relating to form and colour, and were used to present the objects under consideration, not the young explorer's emotions. Yet through this austerity one felt the kindling imagination, the ardour and excitement of the boy, like the vibration in a voice when the speaker strives to conceal his emotion by using only the conventional phrases.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
There are two social classes in Pakistan," Professor Superb said to his unsuspecting audience, gripping the podium with both hands as he spoke. "The first group, large and sweaty, contains those referred to as the masses. The second group is much smaller, but its members exercise vastly greater control over their immediate environment and are collectively termed the elite. The distinction between members of these two groups is made on the basis of control of an important resource:air-conditioning. You see, the elite have managed to re-create for themselves the living standards of say, Sweden without leaving the dusty plains of the subcontinent. They're a mixed lot - Punjabi and Pathans, Sindhis and Baluchis, smugglers , mullahs, soldiers, industrialists - united by their residence in an artificially cooled world. They wake up in air-conditioned houses, drive air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned offices, grab lunch in air-conditioned restaurants (rights of admission reserved), and at the end of the day go home to an air-conditioned lounges to relax in front of their wide-screen TVs. And if they should think about the rest of the people, the great uncooled, and become uneasy as they lie under their blankets in the middle of the summer, there is always prayer, five times a day, which they hope will gain them admittance to an air-conditioned heaven, or at the very least, a long, cool drink during a fiery day in hell.
”
”
Mohsin Hamid (Moth Smoke)
“
The last class of my old professor's life took place once a week in his house, by a window in the study where he could watch a small hibiscus plant shed its pink leaves.
”
”
Mitch Albom (Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson)
“
wished he knew just how it seemed to her. He had been mistaken, he felt. The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
The history of Immanuel Kant's life is difficult to portray, for he had neither life nor history. He led a mechanical, regular, almost abstract bachelor existence in a little retired street of Königsberg, an old town on the north-eastern frontier of Germany. I do not believe that the great clock of the cathedral performed in a more passionless and methodical manner its daily routine than did its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Rising in the morning, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, everything had its appointed time, and the neighbors knew that it was exactly half-past three o'clock when Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, tight-fitting coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, and betook himself to the little linden avenue called after him to this day the "Philosopher's Walk." Summer and winter he walked up and down it eight times, and when the weather was dull or heavy clouds prognosticated rain, the townspeople beheld his servant, the old Lampe, trudging anxiously behind Kant with a big umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence.
What a strange contrast did this man's outward life present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts! In sooth, had the citizens of Königsberg had the least presentiment of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt far more awful dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can but kill the body. But the worthy folk saw in him nothing more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him.
”
”
Heinrich Heine
“
Only an unsatisfied preference is bad. In other words, he argues that although it is good to have fulfilled whatever desires one might have, one is not better off having a fulfilled desire than having no desire at all. By way of example, consider the case in which we ‘paint the tree nearest to Sydney Opera house red and give Kate a pill that makes her wish that the tree nearest to Sydney Opera House were red’*. Professor Fehige plausibly denies that we do Kate any favour in doing this. She is no better off than had we done nothing. What matters is not that people have satisfied desires but that they do not have unsatisfied ones. It is the avoidance of frustration that is important.
* Fehige, Christoph, ‘A Pareto Principle for Possible People’, 513–14.
”
”
David Benatar (Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence)
“
But now that the vivid consciousness of an earlier state had come back to him, the Professor felt that life with this Kansas boy, little as there had been of it, was the realest of his lives, and that all the years between had been accidental and ordered from the outside. His career, his wife, his family, were not his life at all, but a chain of events which had happened to him. All these things had nothing to do with the person he was in the beginning. The
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
The Headmaster told Professor Flitwick that this was, indeed, a secret and delicate matter of which he had already been informed, and that he did not think pressing it at this time would help me or anyone. Professor Flitwick started to say something about the Headmaster's usual plotting going much too far, and I had to interrupt at that point and explain that it had been my own idea and not anything the Headmaster forced me into, so Professor Flitwick spun around and started lecturing me, and the Headmaster interrupted him and said that as the Boy-Who-Lived I was doomed to have weird and dangerous adventures so I was safer if I got into them on purpose instead of waiting for them to happen by accident, and that was when Professor Flitwick threw up his little hands and started shrieking in a high-pitched voice at both of us about how he didn't care what we were cooking up together, but this wasn't ever to happen again for as long as I was in Ravenclaw House or he would have me thrown out and I could go to Gryffindor which was where all this Dumbledoring belonged -
”
”
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
“
To people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidence of human labour and care in the soil of an empty country. It comes to you as a sort of message, makes you feel differently about the ground you walk over every day.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
November 29, 2016
Dear President Obama,
We are writing to express our grave concern regarding the mental stability of our President-Elect. Professional standards do not permit us to venture a diagnosis for a public figure whom we have not evaluated personally. Nevertheless, his widely reported symptoms of mental instability — including grandiosity, impulsivity, hypersensitivity to slights or criticism, and an apparent inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality — lead us to question his fitness for the immense responsibilities of the office.
We strongly recommend that, in preparation for assuming these responsibilities, he receive a full medical and neuropsychiatric evaluation by an impartial team of investigators.
Sincerely,
Judith Herman, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry Harvard Medical School
Nanette Gartrell, M.D.
Dee Mosbacher, M.D.
”
”
Judith Lewis Herman
“
By elevating physical violence over the other facets of a battered woman’s experience,” law professor Leigh Goodmark wrote in 2004, “the legal system sets the standard by which the stories of battered women are judged. If there is no [legally designated] assault, she is not a victim, regardless of how debilitating her experience has been, how complete her isolation, or how horrific the emotional abuse she has suffered. And by creating this kind of myopia about the nature of domestic violence, the legal system does battered women a grave injustice.
”
”
Carmen Maria Machado (In the Dream House)
“
I had no plans, I wanted nothing but to get back to the mesa and live a free life and breathe free air, and never, never again to see hundreds of little black-coated men pouring out of white buildings. Queer, how much more depressing they are than workmen coming out of a factory.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Professor McGonagall says that I'm the most Ravenclaw person she's ever seen or heard tell of in legend, so much so that Rowena herself would tell me to get out more, whatever that means, and that I'll undoubtedly end up in Ravenclaw House if the hat isn't screaming too loudly for the rest of us to make out any words, end quote.
”
”
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
“
The information he did not get was formal information. The data. The details. The options. The analysis. He didn’t do PowerPoint. For anything that smacked of a classroom or of being lectured to—“professor” was one of his bad words, and he was proud of never going to class, never buying a textbook, never taking a note—he got up and left the room.
”
”
Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
“
Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the Professor’s mysterious old house. At first, her brothers and sister don’t believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch. When they meet the Great Lion, Aslan, they realize they’ve been called to a great adventure and bravely join the battle to free Narnia from the Witch’s sinister spell.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #2))
“
I shall expect you and the Slytherins in the Great Hall in twenty minutes, also,” said Professor McGonagall. “If you wish to leave with your students, we shall not stop you. But if any of you attempt to sabotage our resistance or take up arms against us within this castle, then, Horace, we duel to kill.”
“Minerva!” he said, aghast.
“The time has come for Slytherin House to decide upon its loyalties,” interrupted Professor McGonagall. “Go and wake your students, Horace.”
Harry did not stay to watch Slughorn splutter: He and Luna ran after Professor McGonagall, who had taken up a position in the middle of the corridor and raised her wand.
“Piertotum--oh, for heaven’s sake, Filch, not now--”
The aged caretaker had just come hobbling into view, shouting, “Students out of bed! Students in the corridors!”
“They’re supposed to be, you blithering idiot!” shouted McGonagall. “Now go and do something constructive! Find Peeves!”
“P-Peeves?” stammered Filch as though he had never heard the name before.
“Yes, Peeves, you fool, Peeves! Haven’t you been complaining about him for a quarter of a century? Go and fetch him, at once!”
Filch evidently thought Professor McGonagall had taken leave of her senses, but hobbled away, hunch-shouldered, muttering under his breath.
“And now--Piertotum Locomotor!” cried Professor McGonagall.
And all along the corridor the statues and suits of armor jumped down from their plinths, and from the echoing crashes from the floors above and below, Harry knew that their fellows throughout the castle had done the same.
“Hogwarts is threatened!” shouted Professor McGonagall. “Man the boundaries, protect us, do your duty to our school!
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
He saw the human shadows flitting through his second world. Most of them had unkempt beards. Some walked along looking at the sky, others at the ground. All wore shabby clothing. All lived in poverty. And all were serene. Closed in on every side by streetcars, they freely breathed the air of peace. The men in this world were unfortunate, for they knew nothing of the real world. But they were fortunate as well, for they had fled the Burning House of worldly suffering. Professor Hirota was in this second world. So, too, was Nonomiya. Sanshiro stood where he could understand the air of this world more or less. He could leave it whenever he wished. But to do so, to relinquish a taste he had finally begun to savor, was something he was loath to do.
”
”
Natsume Sōseki (Sanshirō)
“
We should get into the way of appearing lively in religion, more by being lively in the service of God and our generation than by the liveliness and forwardness of our tongues, and making a business of proclaiming on the house tops with our mouths the holy and eminent acts and exercises of our own hearts. Christians that are intimate friends would talk together of their experiences and comforts in a manner better becoming Christian humility and modesty, and more to each other's profit: their tongues not running before, but rather going behind their hands and feet, after the prudent example of the blessed apostle, 2 Cor. xii. 6. Many occasions of spiritual pride would thus be cut off, and so a great door shut against the devil. A great many of the main stumbling-blocks against experimental and powerful religion would be removed, and religion would be declared and manifested in such a way that, instead of hardening spectators, and exceedingly promoting infidelity and atheism, it would, above all things, tend to convince men that there is a reality in religion, and greatly awaken them, and win them, by convincing their consciences of the importance and excellency of religion. Thus the light of professors would so shine before men, that others, seeing their good works, would glorify their Father which is in heaven.
”
”
Jonathan Edwards (The Religious Affections)
“
Fairly considered, the sewing-room was the most inconvenient study a man could possibly have, but it was the one place in the house where he could get isolation, insulation from the engaging drama of domestic life. No one was tramping over him, and only a vague sense, generally pleasant, of what went on below came up the narrow stairway. There were certainly no other advantages.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
In 1913, America had a professor-president in the White House -- a man of intelligence and principle, elected to clean up the corruption that had flourished in the much of politics for so long. Public health and public schools were beating back the darkness in slums and settlements. The poor were lifted up and the proud brought down as Progressives reined in the power of Big Money.
”
”
Mary Doria Russell (Dreamers of the Day)
“
I asked Hillary why she had chosen Yale Law School over Harvard. She laughed and said, "Harvard didn't want me." I said I was sorry that Harvard turned her down. She replied, "No, I received letters of acceptance from both schools." She explained that a boyfriend had then invited her to the Harvard Law School Christmas Dance, at which several Harvard Law School professors were in attendance. She asked one for advice about which law school to attend. The professor looked at her and said, "We have about as many woen as we need here. You should go to Yale. The teaching there is more suited to women." I asked who the professor was, and she told me she couldn't remember his name but that she thought it started with a B. A few days later, we met the Clintons at a party. I came prepared with yearbook photos of all the professors from that year whose name began with B. She immediately identified the culprit. He was the same professor who had given my A student a D, because she didn't "think like a lawyer." It turned out, of course, that it was this professor -- and not the two (and no doubt more) brilliant women he was prejudiced against - who didn't think like a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to act on the evidence, rather than on their prejudgments. The sexist professor ultimately became a judge on the International Court of Justice.
I told Hillary that it was too bad I wasn't at that Christmas dance, because I would have urged her to come to Harvard. She laughed, turned to her husband, and said, "But then I wouldn't have met him... and he wouldn't have become President.
”
”
Alan M. Dershowitz
“
The universities are an absolute wreck right now, because for decades, any graduate student in the humanities who had independent thinking was driven out. There was no way to survive without memorizing all these stupid bromides with this referential bowing to these over-inflated figures like Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, and so on. Basically, it's been a tyranny in the humanities, because the professors who are now my age – who are the baby boomer professors, who made their careers on the back of Foucault and so on – are determined that that survive. So you have a kind of vampirism going on.
So I've been getting letters for 25 years since Sexual Personae was released in 1990, from refugees from the graduate schools. It's been a terrible loss. One of my favorite letters was early on: a woman wrote to me, she was painting houses in St. Louis, she said that she had wanted a career as a literature professor and had gone into the graduate program in comparative literature at Berkeley. And finally, she was forced to drop out because, she said, every time she would express enthusiasm for a work they were studying in the seminar, everyone would look at her as if she had in some way created a terrible error of taste. I thought, 'Oh my God', see that's what's been going on – a pretentious style of superiority to the text.
[When asked what can change this]: Rebellion! Rebellion by the grad students. This is what I'm trying to foment. We absolutely need someone to stand up and start criticizing authority figures. But no; this generation of young people have been trained throughout middle school and high school and college to be subservient to authority.
”
”
Camille Paglia
“
I was extremely curious about the alternatives to the kind of life I had been leading, and my friends and I exchanged rumors and scraps of information we dug from official publications. I was struck less by the West's technological developments and high living standards than by the absence of political witch-hunts, the lack of consuming suspicion, the dignity of the individual, and the incredible amount of liberty. To me, the ultimate proof of freedom in the West was that there seemed to be so many people there attacking the West and praising China. Almost every other day the front page of Reference, the newspaper which carded foreign press items, would feature some eulogy of Mao and the Cultural Revolution. At first I was angered by these, but they soon made me see how tolerant another society could be. I realized that this was the kind of society I wanted to live in: where people were allowed to hold different, even outrageous views. I began to see that it was the very tolerance of oppositions, of protesters, that kept the West progressing.
Still, I could not help being irritated by some observations. Once I read an article by a Westerner who came to China to see some old friends, university professors, who told him cheerfully how they had enjoyed being denounced and sent to the back end of beyond, and how much they had relished being reformed. The author concluded that Mao had indeed made the Chinese into 'new people' who would regard what was misery to a Westerner as pleasure.
I was aghast. Did he not know that repression was at its worst when there was no complaint? A hundred times more so when the victim actually presented a smiling face? Could he not see to what a pathetic condition these professors had been reduced, and what horror must have been involved to degrade them so? I did not realize that the acting that the Chinese were putting on was something to which Westerners were unaccustomed, and which they could not always decode.
I did not appreciate either that information about China was not easily available, or was largely misunderstood, in the West, and that people with no experience of a regime like China's could take its propaganda and rhetoric at face value. As a result, I assumed that these eulogies were dishonest. My friends and I would joke that they had been bought by our government's 'hospitality." When foreigners were allowed into certain restricted places in China following Nixon's visit, wherever they went the authorities immediately cordoned off enclaves even within these enclaves. The best transport facilities, shops, restaurants, guest houses and scenic spots were reserved for them, with signs reading "For Foreign Guests Only." Mao-tai, the most sought-after liquor, was totally unavailable to ordinary Chinese, but freely available to foreigners. The best food was saved for foreigners. The newspapers proudly reported that Henry Kissinger had said his waistline had expanded as a result of the many twelve-course banquets he enjoyed during his visits to China. This was at a time when in Sichuan, "Heaven's Granary," our meat ration was half a pound per month, and the streets of Chengdu were full of homeless peasants who had fled there from famine in the north, and were living as beggars. There was great resentment among the population about how the foreigners were treated like lords. My friends and I began saying among ourselves: "Why do we attack the Kuomintang for allowing signs saying "No Chinese or Dogs" aren't we doing the same?
Getting hold of information became an obsession. I benefited enormously from my ability to read English, as although the university library had been looted during the Cultural Revolution, most of the books it had lost had been in Chinese. Its extensive English-language collection had been turned upside down, but was still largely intact.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
The Professor made no reply to this. Lillian had been fiercely jealous of Tom Outland. As he left the house, he was reflecting that people who are intensely in love when they marry, and who go on being in love, always meet with something which suddenly or gradually makes a difference. Sometimes it is the children, or the grubbiness of being poor, sometimes a second infatuation. In their own case it had been, curiously enough, his pupil, Tom Outland. St.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
He knew that he was terribly selfish about personal pleasures, fought for them. if a thing gave him delight, he got it, if he sold his shirt for it. By doing without many so-called necessities he had managed to have his luxuries.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
But now that the vivid consciousness of an earlier state had come back to him, the Professor felt that life with this Kansas boy, little as there had been of it, was the realest of his lives, and that all the years between had been accidental and ordered from the outside. His career, his wife, his family, were not his life at all, but the chain of events which had happened to him. All these things had nothing to do with the person he was in the beginning.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
My grandest boyhood ambition was to be a professor of history at Notre Dame. Although what I do now is just a different way of working with history, I suppose.”) He told me about his blind-in-one-eye canary rescued from a Woolworth’s who woke him singing every morning of his boyhood; the bout of rheumatic fever that kept him in bed for six months; and the queer little antique neighborhood library with frescoed ceilings (“torn down now, alas”) where he’d gone to get away from his house. About Mrs. De Peyster, the lonely old heiress he’d visited after school, a former Belle of Albany and local historian who clucked over Hobie and fed him Dundee cake ordered from England in tins, who was happy to stand for hours explaining to Hobie every single item in her china cabinet and who had owned, among other things, the mahogany sofa—rumored to have belonged to General Herkimer—that got him interested in furniture in the first place.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
“
During all those years of struggle and heartache, my mother never worried. She took all her troubles to God in prayer. Every night before we went to bed, Mother would read a chapter from the Bible; frequently Mother or Father would read these comforting words of Jesus: “In my Father’s house are many mansions…. I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there ye may be also.” Then we all knelt down before our chairs in that lonely Missouri farmhouse and prayed for God’s love and protection. When William James was professor of philosophy at Harvard, he said, “Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith.” You don’t have to go to Harvard to discover that. My mother found that out on a Missouri farm.
”
”
Dale Carnegie (How To Stop Worrying & Start Living)
“
In the United States, a four-year-old American kid isn’t obliged to greet me when he walks into my house. He gets to skulk in under the umbrella of his parents’ greeting. And in an American context, that’s supposed to be fine with me. I don’t need the child’s acknowledgment because I don’t quite count him as a full person; he’s in a separate kids’ realm. I might hear all about how gifted he is, but he never actually speaks to me. When I’m at a family luncheon back in the United States, I’m struck that the cousins and stepcousins at the table, who range in age from five to fourteen, don’t say anything at all to me unless I pry it out of them. Some can only muster one-word responses to my questions. Even the teenagers aren’t used to expressing themselves with confidence to a grown-up they don’t know well. Part of what the French obsession with bonjour reveals is that, in France, kids don’t get to have this shadowy presence. The child greets, therefore he is. Just as any adult who walks into my house has to acknowledge me, any child who walks in must acknowledge me, too. “Greeting is essentially recognizing someone as a person,” says Benoît, the professor. “People feel injured if they’re not greeted by children that way.
”
”
Pamela Druckerman (Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting)
“
Then he added, in an almost threatening tone: Without these rasping hands, professor, not a chair would exist, or a building, a car, nothing, not even you; if we workers stopped working everything would stop, the sky would fall to earth and the earth would shoot up the sky, the plants would take over the cities, the Arno would flood your fine houses, and only those who have always worked would know how to survive, and as for you two, you with all your books, the dogs would tear you to pieces.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels, #3))
“
Not taking off his dark overcoat, lending him quite a hulking gangster look, pacing in front of the CIA’s wall of stars for its fallen agents, in front of a crowd of about three hundred agency personnel and a group of White House staffers, and, suddenly, in a mood of sleepless cockiness and pleasure at having a captive crowd, the new president, disregarding his text, launched into what we could confidently call some of the most peculiar remarks ever delivered by an American president. “I know a lot about West Point, I’m a person who very strongly believes in academics. Every time I say I had an uncle who was a great professor at MIT for 35 years, who did a fantastic job in so many ways academically—he was an academic genius—and then they say, Is Donald Trump an intellectual? Trust me, I’m like a smart person.
”
”
Michael Wolff (Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House)
“
I don't myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn't given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn't given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins-not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It's the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You'll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don't think you help people by making their conduct of no importance-you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
What he had not known was that, at a given time, that first nature could return to a man, unchanged by all the pursuits and passions and experiences of his life; untouched even by the tastes and intellectual activities which have been strong enough to give him distinction among his fellows and to have made for him, as they say, a name in the world. Perhaps this reversion did not often occur, but he knew it had happened to him, and he suspected it had happened to his grandfather. He did not regret his life, but he was indifferent to it. It seemed to him like the life of another person. Along
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
The guy says, “Buddy, the housing situation in Ithaca is tough. In fact, it’s so tough that, believe it or not, a professor had to sleep on a couch in this lobby last night!” I look around, and it’s the same lobby! I turn to him and I say, “Well, I’m that professor, and the professor doesn’t want to do it again!
”
”
Richard P. Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character)
“
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” Legrasse had one point in advance of Professor Webb, for several among his mongrel prisoners had repeated to him what older celebrants had told them the words meant. This text, as given, ran something like this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction)
“
expression on his face. He’s in his early thirties, tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in jeans, a black polo shirt, and black flip-flops. With his short brown hair, reddish goatee, and sideburns, McHugh looks like a typical Gen Xer, but he speaks in the soothing, considered tones of a college professor. McHugh doesn’t preach or worship at Saddleback, but we’ve chosen to meet here because it’s such an important symbol of evangelical culture. Since services are just about to start, there’s little time to chat. Saddleback offers six different “worship venues,” each housed in its own building or tent and set to its own beat: Worship Center,
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
1775 members of the Colonial Congress were staying as guests in a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their aim was to design the American flag. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were present and so was an old professor, who seemed to be staying there by coincidence. Somewhat to the surprise of the others, Washington and Franklin deferred to the professor. They seemed to recognize him as their superior, immediately and unreservedly, and all of his suggestions for the design of the flag were promptly adopted. Then he vanished and was never seen or heard of again. Was this stranger one of the Hidden Masters who direct the history of the world?
”
”
Jonathan Black (The Secret History of the World)
“
As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Did he talk about silos?”
“Of course he did,” I said. “We have to break down the silos that separate the academic side of the house from the Student Retention Office, apparently.”
Emma wrinkled her nose. “Why is it a good thing to break silos? All that happens when you break a silo is that the grain spills out. Or the missile falls over.
”
”
Frankie Bow (The Musubi Murder (Professor Molly Mysteries, #1))
“
Harry!” he panted, massaging his immense chest beneath his emerald-green silk pajamas. “My dear boy…what a surprise…Minerva, do please explain…Severus…what…?”
“Our headmaster is taking a short break,” said Professor McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the window.
“Professor!” Harry shouted, his hands at his forehead. He could see the Inferi-filled lake sliding beneath him, and he felt the ghostly green boat bump into the underground shore, and Voldemort leapt from it with murder in his heart--
“Professor, we’ve got to barricade the school, he’s coming now!”
“Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming,” she told the other teachers. Sprout and Flitwick gasped; Slughorn let out a low groan. “Potter has work to do in the castle on Dumbledore’s orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are capable while Potter does what he needs to do.”
“You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?” squeaked Flitwick.
“But we can hold him up,” said Professor Sprout.
“Thank you, Pomona,” said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding. “I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance.”
“Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. “I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House.”
And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering, “Tentacula. Devil’s Snare. And Snargaluff pods…yes, I’d like to see the Death Eaters fighting those.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
It's so simple," she says. "So obvious. Exponential growth inside a finite system leads to collapse. But people don't see it. So the authority of people is bankrupt." Maidenhair fixes him with a look between interest and pity. Adam just wants the cradle to stop rocking. "Is the house on fire?"
A shrug. A sideways pull of the lips. "Yes."
"And you want to observe the handful of people who're screaming, Put it out, when everyone else is happy watching things burn."
A minute ago, this woman was the subject of Adam's observational study. Now he wants to confide in her. "It has a name. We call it the bystander effect. I once let my professor die because no one else in the lecture hall stood up. The larger the group . . ."
"…the harder it is to cry, Fire?
”
”
Richard Powers
“
The Surrealism movement, our professor explained, was inspired by Freud’s concept of the uncanny, the dreadful double. According to Freud, doubling creates meaning. Doubling turns sounds into words; a baby first speaks by turning ma into mama, pa into papa. But when a double appears uninvited—the buried object returns—it brings us into the realm of the uncanny. We watch dead things wake up. And we are afraid.
”
”
Elisabeth Thomas (Catherine House)
“
You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?” squeaked Flitwick.
“But we can hold him up,” said Professor Sprout.
“Thank you, Pomona,” said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding. “I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance.”
“Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. “I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House.”
And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering, “Tentacula. Devil’s Snare. And Snargaluff pods…yes, I’d like to see the Death Eaters fighting those.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
All of us believe you belong here,” I’d said to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson girls as they sat, many of them looking a little awestruck, in the Gothic old-world dining hall at Oxford, surrounded by university professors and students who’d come out for the day to mentor them. I said something similar anytime we had kids visit the White House—teens we invited from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; children from local schools who showed up to work in the garden; high schoolers who came for our career days and workshops in fashion, music, and poetry; even kids I only got to give a quick but emphatic hug to in a rope line. The message was always the same. You belong. You matter. I think highly of you.
An economist from a British university would later put out a study that looked at the test performances of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson students, finding that their overall scores jumped significantly after I’d started connecting with them—the equivalent of moving from a C average to an A. Any credit for improvement really belonged to the girls, their teachers, and the daily work they did together, but it also affirmed the idea that kids will invest more when they feel they’re being invested in. I understood that there was power in showing children my regard.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
I also started giving Christmas lectures to the house staff and clinic staff that focused on music written by composers who had experienced severe depression or manic-depressive illness. These informal lectures became the basis for a concert that a friend of mine, a professor of music at UCLA, and I subsequently produced in 1985 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In an attempt to raise public awareness about mental illness,
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind)
“
Don’t lecture Trump. He doesn’t like professors. He doesn’t like intellectuals. Trump was a guy who “never went to class. Never got the syllabus. Never took a note. Never went to a lecture. The night before the final, he comes in at midnight from the fraternity house, puts on a pot of coffee, takes your notes, memorizes as much as he can, walks in at 8 in the morning and gets a C. And that’s good enough. He’s going to be a billionaire.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
“
All thinking is sorting, classifying. All perceiving relates to expectations and therefore to comparisons. When we say that from the air houses appear like toys to us, or human beings like ants, we mean, I suggest, that we are startled by the unfamiliar sight of a house that compares to the familiar sight of a toy on the nursery floor. We feel that but for our knowledge we might have been deceived and have almost mistaken the one for the other. Our guesses and methods of testing them have become somewhat unsettled, and we try to describe the experience by indicating possibilities which flitted through our minds. But, to repeat, there is no "objective" sense in which a human being can look "the size of an ant" simply because an ant crawling on our pillow will look gigantic in comparison with a man in the distance. In professor E.G. Boring's words, "Phenomenal size, like physical size is relative and has no meaning except as a relation between objects.
”
”
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
“
That reminds me, does Professor Camden know that you copied his house key yet?"
"Yeah, he already took the first copy back," Everly replies and continues making her drink.
I have to set my latte down at that point. I should know better than to have a conversation with Everly while drinking hot liquids. "The first copy, Everly?"
"Yeah. And he didn't even ask me for the second copy." She takes a sip of her drink. "I'm kind of pissed off about it, to be honest. It's like he doesn't even know me, right?"
I nod slowly. "Right."
"Obviously I would make three copies. Anyone should know that."
I lean against the back counter and nod. "Obviously." Honestly, I have no idea how many copies one would make when stealing someone's house key, but it's best to just go along when Everly is on a roll.
"I expect him to change his locks once I use the second key so the third key is likely useless, but he should know me well enough to ask for the second key." She sighs, looking truly despondent.
”
”
Jana Aston (Wrong (Cafe, #1))
“
Why do we bury our dead?” His nose was dented in at the bridge like a sphinx; the cause of which I could only imagine had been a freak archaeological accident.
I thought about my parents. They had requested in their will that they be buried side by side in a tiny cemetery a few miles from our house. “Because it’s respectful?”
He shook his head. “That’s true, but that’s not the reason we do it.”
But that was the reason we buried people, wasn’t it? After gazing at him in confusion, I raised my hand, determined to get the right answer. “Because leaving people out in the open is unsanitary.”
Mr. B. shook his head and scratched the stubble on his neck.
I glared at him, annoyed at his ignorance and certain that my responses were correct. “Because it’s the best way to dispose of a body?”
Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.”
Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?”
“Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people.
“Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?”
No one answered.
But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.”
Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left.
After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?”
There was a vacant silence.
“Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?”
When no one answered, he answered his own question.
“The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!”
As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality. When he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me.
Who is cuter?
A. Professor Bliss
B. Brett Steyers
C. Dante Berlin
D. The mummy
I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking.
”
”
Yvonne Woon (Dead Beautiful (Dead Beautiful, #1))
“
Olo, Remi, Kwuga, Nur, Anajama, Rhoden. Only Olo and Remi were in my group. Everyone else I met in the dining area or the learning room where various lectures were held by professors onboard the ship. They were all girls who grew up in sprawling houses, who’d never walked through the desert, who’d never stepped on a snake in the dry grass. They were girls who could not stand the rays of Earth’s sun unless it was shining through a tinted window.
Yet they were girls who knew what I meant when I spoke of “treeing.” We sat in my room (because, having so few travel items, mine was the emptiest) and challenged each other to look out at the stars and imagine the most complex equation and then split it in half and then in half again and again. When you do math fractals long enough, you kick yourself into treeing just enough to get lost in the shallows of the mathematical sea. None of us would have made it into the university if we couldn’t tree, but it’s not easy. We were the best and we pushed each other to get closer to “God.
”
”
Nnedi Okorafor (Binti (Binti, #1))
“
Suddenly with a single bound he leaped into the room. Winning a way past us before any of us could raise a hand to stay him. There was something so pantherlike in the movement, something so unhuman, that it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming. The first to act was Harker, who with a quick movement, threw himself before the door leading into the room in the front of the house. As the Count saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the eyeteeth long and pointed. But the evil smile as quickly passed into a cold stare of lion-like disdain. His expression again changed as, with a single impulse, we all advanced upon him. It was a pity that we had not some better organized plan of attack, for even at the moment I wondered what we were to do. I did not myself know whether our lethal weapons would avail us anything. Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at him. The blow was a powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count's leap back saved him. A second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through his heart. As it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat, making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank notes and a stream of gold fell out. The expression of the Count's face was so hellish, that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the terrible knife aloft again for another stroke. Instinctively I moved forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in my left hand. I felt a mighty power fly along my arm, and it was without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar movement made spontaneously by each one of us. It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity, of anger and hellish rage, which came over the Count's face. His waxen hue became greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound. The next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window. Amid the crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged area below. Through the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the "ting" of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging. We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the ground. He, rushing up the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable door. There he turned and spoke to us. "You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher's. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more. My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side. Your girls that you all love are mine already. And through them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding and to be my jackals when I want to feed. Bah!" With a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind him. A door beyond opened and shut. The first of us to speak was the Professor. Realizing the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved toward the hall. "We have learnt something… much! Notwithstanding his brave words, he fears us. He fears time, he fears want! For if not, why he hurry so? His very tone betray him, or my ears deceive. Why take that money? You follow quick. You are hunters of the wild beast, and understand it so. For me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use to him, if so that he returns.
”
”
Bram Stoker (Dracula)
“
My point is that bias is not advertised by a glowing sign worn around jurors’ necks; we are all guilty of it, because the brain is wired for us to see what we believe, and it usually happens outside of everyone’s awareness. Affective realism decimates the ideal of the impartial juror. Want to increase the likelihood of a conviction in a murder trial? Show the jury some gruesome photographic evidence. Tip their body budgets out of balance and chances are they’ll attribute their unpleasant affect to the defendant: “I feel bad, therefore you must have done something bad. You are a bad person.” Or permit family members of the deceased to describe how the crime has hurt them, a practice known as a victim impact statement, and the jury will tend to recommend more severe punishments. Crank up the emotional impact of a victim impact statement by recording it professionally on video and adding music and narration like a dramatic film, and you’ve got the makings of a jury-swaying masterpiece.45 Affective realism intertwines with the law outside the courtroom as well. Imagine that you are enjoying a quiet evening at home when suddenly you hear loud banging outside. You look out the window and see an African American man attempting to force open the door of a nearby house. Being a dutiful citizen, you call 911, and the police arrive and arrest the perpetrator. Congratulations, you have just brought about the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as it happened on July 16, 2009. Gates was trying to force open the front door of his own home, which had become stuck while he was traveling. Affective realism strikes again. The real-life eyewitness in this incident had an affective feeling, presumably based on her concepts about crime and skin color, and made a mental inference that the man outside the window had intent to commit a crime.
”
”
Lisa Feldman Barrett (How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain)
“
As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man he only happiness he has ever had.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Look around your house. There is probably enough material there to allow you to make a human being. If you, the new professor Frankenstein, put all the bits together in exactly the right way, and then you shot some electricity into the body, would you be able to stand back, raise your hands to the heavens and cry, 'It’s alive!'. You would need to be a fucking lunatic to believe that such a thing is possible. But, deep down, every materialist believes it. After all, they think they will create conscious robots from scrapyard metal. Emergence – how stupid things become smarter together. Not! Emergence – how Not-X comes from X just by randomly shuffling X around long enough.
”
”
David Sinclair (One Right Answer, Infinite Wrong Answers: Why Humanity Is Addicted to Being Wrong)
“
If somebody swapped the real sword for the fake while it was in Dumbledore’s office,” she panted, as they propped the painting against the side of the tent, “Phineas Nigellus would have seen it happen, he hangs right beside the case!”
“Unless he was asleep,” said Harry, but he still held his breath as Hermione knelt down in front of the empty canvas, her wand directed at its center, cleared her throat, then said:
“Er--Phineas? Phineas Nigellus?”
Nothing happened.
“Phineas Nigellus?” said Hermione again. “Professor Black? Please could we talk to you? Please?”
“‘Please’ always helps,” said a cold, snide voice, and Phineas Nigellus slid into his portrait. At once, Hermione cried:
“Obscuro!”
A black blindfold appeared over Phineas Nigellus’s clever, dark eyes, causing him to bump into the frame and shriek with pain.
“What--how dare--what are you--?”
“I’m very sorry, Professor Black,” said Hermione, “but it’s a necessary precaution!”
“Remove this foul addition at once! Remove it, I say! You are ruining a great work of art! Where am I? What is going on?”
“Never mind where we are,” said Harry, and Phineas Nigellus froze, abandoning his attempts to peel off the painted blindfold.
“Can that possibly be the voice of the elusive Mr. Potter?”
“Maybe,” said Harry, knowing that this would keep Phineas Nigellus’s interest. “We’ve got a couple of questions to ask you--about the sword of Gryffindor.”
“Ah,” said Phineas Nigellus, now turning his head this way and that in an effort to catch sight of Harry, “yes. That silly girl acted most unwisely there--”
“Shut up about my sister,” said Ron roughly. Phineas Nigellus raised supercilious eyebrows.
“Who else is here?” he asked, turning his head from side to side. “Your tone displeases me! The girl and her friends were foolhardy in the extreme. Thieving from the headmaster!”
“They weren’t thieving,” said Harry. “That sword isn’t Snape’s.”
“It belongs to Professor Snape’s school,” said Phineas Nigellus. “Exactly what claim did the Weasley girl have upon it? She deserved her punishment, as did the idiot Longbottom and the Lovegood oddity!”
“Neville is not an idiot and Luna is not an oddity!” said Hermione.
“Where am I?” repeated Phineas Nigellus, staring to wrestle with the blindfold again. “Where have you brought me? Why have you removed me from the house of my forebears?”
“Never mind that! How did Snape punish Ginny, Neville, and Luna?” asked Harry urgently.
“Professor Snape sent them into the Forbidden Forest, to do some work for the oaf, Hagrid.”
“Hagrid’s not an oaf!” said Hermione shrilly.
“And Snape might’ve thought that was a punishment,” said Harry, “but Ginny, Neville, and Luna probably had a good laugh with Hagrid. The Forbidden Forest…they’ve faced plenty worse than the Forbidden Forest, big deal!
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
The papers always referred to the strikers as foreign; as Chinamen, Indians, Arabs, and Africans. (Never mind Professor Craft.) They were never Oxfordians, they were never Englishmen, they were travellers from abroad who had taken advantage of Oxford’s good graces, and who now held the nation hostage. Babel had become synonymous with foreign, and this was very strange, because before this, the Royal Institute of Translation had always been regarded as a national treasure, a quintessentially English institution. But then England, and the English language, had always been more indebted to the poor, the lowly, and the foreign than it cared to admit. The word vernacular came from the Latin verna, meaning ‘house slave’; this emphasized the nativeness, the domesticity of the vernacular language. But the root verna also indicated the lowly origins of the language spoken by the powerful; the terms and phrases invented by slaves, labourers, beggars, and criminals – the vulgar cants, as it were – had infiltrated English until they became proper. And the English vernacular could not properly be called domestic either, because English etymology had roots all over the world. Almanacs and algebra came from Arabic; pyjamas from Sanskrit, ketchup from Chinese, and paddies from Malay. It was only when elite England’s way of life was threatened that the true English, whoever they were, attempted to excise all that had made them.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution)
“
But the great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free. it was the first thing one saw in the morning, across the rugged cow pasture studded with shaggy pines, and it ran through the days like the weather, not a thing thought about, but a part of consciousness itself. When the ice chunks came in of a winter morning, crumbly and white, throwing off gold and rose-coloured reflections from a copper-coloured sun behind grey clouds, he didn't observe the detail or know what is was that made him happy; but now, forty years later, he could recall all its aspects perfectly. They had made pictures in him when he was un-willing and unconscious, when his eyes were merely wide open.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
Hiro would have chalked it all up to class differences, except that her parents
lived in a house in Mexicali with a dirt floor, and his father made more money
than many college professors. But the class idea still held sway in his mind,
because class is more than income -- it has to do with knowing where you stand
in a web of social relationships. Juanita and her folks knew where they stood
with a certitude that bordered on dementia. Hiro never knew. His father was a
sergeant major, his mother was a Korean woman whose people had been mine slaves
in Nippon, and Hiro didn't know whether he was black or Asian or just plain
Army, whether he was rich or poor, educated or ignorant, talented or lucky. He
didn't even have a part of the country to call home until he moved to
California, which is about as specific as saying that you live in the Northern
Hemisphere. In the end, it was probably his general disorientation that did
them in.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)
“
Racism was a constant presence and absence in the Obama White House. We didn’t talk about it much. We didn’t need to—it was always there, everywhere, like white noise. It was there when Obama said that it was stupid for a black professor to be arrested in his own home and got criticized for days while the white police officer was turned into a victim. It was there when a white Southern member of Congress yelled “You lie!” at Obama while he addressed a joint session of Congress. It was there when a New York reality show star built an entire political brand on the idea that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, an idea that was covered as national news for months and is still believed by a majority of Republicans. It was there in the way Obama was talked about in the right-wing media, which spent eight years insisting that he hated America, disparaging his every move, inventing scandals where there were none, attacking him for any time that he took off from work. It was there in the social media messages I got that called him a Kenyan monkey, a boy, a Muslim. And it was there in the refusal of Republicans in Congress to work with him for eight full years, something that Obama was also blamed for no matter what he did. One time, Obama invited congressional Republicans to attend a screening of Lincoln in the White House movie theater—a Steven Spielberg film about how Abraham Lincoln worked with Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. Not one of them came. Obama didn’t talk about it much. Every now and then, he’d show flashes of dark humor in practicing the answer he could give on a particular topic. What do you think it will take for these protests to stop? “Cops need to stop shooting unarmed black folks.” Why do you think you have failed to bring the country together? “Because my being president appears to have literally driven some white people insane.” Do you think some of the opposition you face is about race? “Yes! Of course! Next question.” But he was guarded in public. When he was asked if racism informed the strident opposition to his presidency, he’d carefully ascribe it to other factors.
”
”
Ben Rhodes (The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House)
“
The following books can be recommended: The Muvver Tongue, by Robert Balthrop and Jim Woolveridge, The Journeyman Press, 1980 The Cockney, by Julian Franklyn, Andre Deutsch, 1953 Dictionary of Rhyming Slang, by Julian Franklyn, Routledge, 1975 An unrivalled record of Cockney speech is to be found in Mayhew’s London and the other following books can be recommended: Balthrop, Robert and Jim Woolveridge, The Muvver Tongue (The Journeyman Press, London, 1980). Franklyn, Julian, The Cockney (Andre Deutsch, 1953). Franklyn, Julian, Dictionary of Rhyming Slang (Andre Deutsch, 1961). Harris, Charles, Three Ha’Pence to the Angel (Phoenix House, London, 1950). Jones, Jack, Rhyming Cockney Slang (Abson Books, London, 1971). Lewey, F., Cockney Campaign (Heffer, 1944). Matthews, Professor William, Cockney Past and Present (Routledge, London, 1940). O’London, Jack (Wilfred Whitten), London Stories (TC & EC Jack Ltd, Bristol, 1948). Quennell, Peter, ed., Mayhew’s London (Hamlyn, London, 1969). Robbins, G., Fleet Street Blitzkrieg Diary (Ernest Benn Ltd, London, 1942). Upton, Clive and David Parry, The Dictionary of English Grammar: Survey of English Dialects (Routledge, London, 1994).
”
”
Jennifer Worth (Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1))
“
Harry!” he panted, massaging his immense chest beneath his emerald-green silk pajamas. “My dear boy…what a surprise…Minerva, do please explain…Severus…what…?”
“Our headmaster is taking a short break,” said Professor McGonagall, pointing at the Snape-shaped hole in the window.
“Professor!” Harry shouted, his hands at his forehead. He could see the Inferi-filled lake sliding beneath him, and he felt the ghostly green boat bump into the underground shore, and Voldemort leapt from it with murder in his heart--
“Professor, we’ve got to barricade the school, he’s coming now!”
“Very well. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is coming,” she told the other teachers. Sprout and Flitwick gasped; Slughorn let out a low groan. “Potter has work to do in the castle on Dumbledore’s orders. We need to put in place every protection of which we are capable while Potter does what he needs to do.”
“You realize, of course, that nothing we do will be able to keep out You-Know-Who indefinitely?” squeaked Flitwick.
“But we can hold him up,” said Professor Sprout.
“Thank you, Pomona,” said Professor McGonagall, and between the two witches there passed a look of grim understanding. “I suggest we establish basic protection around the place, then gather our students and meet in the Great Hall. Most must be evacuated, though if any of those who are over age wish to stay and fight, I think they ought to be given the chance.”
“Agreed,” said Professor Sprout, already hurrying toward the door. “I shall meet you in the Great Hall in twenty minutes with my House.”
And as she jogged out of sight, they could hear her muttering, “Tentacula. Devil’s Snare. And Snargaluff pods…yes, I’d like to see the Death Eaters fighting those.”
“I can act from here,” said Flitwick, and although he could barely see out of it, he pointed his wand through the smashed window and started muttering incantations of great complexity. Harry heard a weird rushing noise, as though Flitwick had unleashed the power of the wind into the grounds.
“Professor,” Harry said, approaching the little Charms master, “Professor, I’m sorry to interrupt, but this is important. Have you got any idea where the diadem of Ravenclaw is?”
“--Protego Horribilis--the diadem of Ravenclaw?” squeaked Flitwick. “A little extra wisdom never goes amiss, Potter, but I hardly think it would be much use in this situation!”
“I only meant--do you know where it is? Have you ever seen it?”
“Seen it? Nobody has seen it in living memory! Long since lost, boy!”
Harry felt a mixture of desperate disappointment and panic. What, then, was the Horcrux?
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
“
Generalized Social Anxiety
In contrast to people with specific social anxieties, you may be afraid in a wide variety of situations. You might feel that people are judging everything you do and you might set unreasonable standards of perfection for yourself. This condition is called generalized (or discrete) social anxiety. Generalized social anxiety accounts for 80 percent of all cases of social anxiety.
Often, people with generalized social anxiety get caught in a vicious cycle. Because they are overly anxious in many situations, they act in clumsy and awkward ways, which in turn makes them feel even more discouraged and anxious. This cycle often results in depression and chronic stress.
Generalized social anxiety can affect almost every aspect of your life. This has been the case for Toni, a college senior.
In high school, I hardly had any friends. I didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities and managed to get by with average grades. Because I attend a large state university, I am even more invisible. So far, I have avoided any class that has any interaction with my peers, such as discussion groups or labs.
As graduation approaches, I need to decide what type of career I want. The thought of job interviews terrifies me. I am considering grad school but would need recommendations to apply. I haven’t even spoken to most of my professors, and the ones who know me probably can’t say anything good about me.
As a result, I’m really depressed. When I imagine the future, I can’t see myself being happy. I’ll probably move back to my parents’ house after graduation. I know they are disappointed in me, and that makes me feel like a complete failure.
”
”
Heather Moehn (Social Anxiety (Coping With Series))
“
A winnowing fan was droning away in one of the barns and dust poured out of the open door. On the threshold stood the master himself, Alyokhin, a man of about forty, tall, stout, with long hair, and he looked more like a professor or an artist than a landowner. He wore a white shirt that hadn't been washed for a very long time, and it was tied round with a piece of rope as a belt. Instead of trousers he was wearing underpants; mud and straw clung to his boots. His nose and eyes were black with dust. He immediately recognised Ivan Ivanych and Burkin, and was clearly delighted to see them.
'Please come into the house, gentlemen,' he said, smiling, 'I'll be with you in a jiffy.'
It was a large house, with two storeys. Alyokhin lived on the ground floor in the two rooms with vaulted ceilings and small windows where his estate managers used to live. They were simply furnished and smelled of rye bread, cheap vodka and harness. He seldom used the main rooms upstairs, reserving them for guests. Ivan Ivanych and Burkin were welcomed by the maid, who was such a beautiful young woman that they both stopped and stared at each other.
'You can't imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen,' Alyokhin said as he followed them into the hall. 'A real surprise!' Then he turned to the maid and said, 'Pelageya, bring some dry clothes for the gentlemen. I suppose I'd better change too. But I must have a wash first, or you'll think I haven't had one since spring. Would you like to come to the bathing-hut while they get things ready in the house?'
The beautiful Pelageya, who had such a dainty look and a gentle face, brought soap and towels, and Alyokhin went off with his guests to the bathing-hut.
'Yes, it's ages since I had a good wash,' he said as he undressed. 'As you can see, it's a nice hut. My father built it, but I never find time these days for a swim.'
He sat on one of the steps and smothered his long hair and neck with soap; the water turned brown.
'Yes, I must confess...' Ivan Ivanych murmered, with a meaningful look at his head.
'Haven't had a wash for ages,' Alyokhin repeated in his embarrassment and soaped himself again; the water turned a dark inky blue.
”
”
Anton Chekhov (Gooseberries and Other Stories (The Greatest Short Stories, Pocket Book))
“
The Comte de Chagny was right; no gala performance ever equalled this one. All the great composers of the day had conducted their own works in turns. Faure and Krauss had sung; and on that evening, Christine Daaé had revealed her true self, for the first time, to the astonished and and enthusiastic audience. Gounod had conducted the Funeral March of a Marionette; Reyer, his beautiful overture to Siguar; Saint Saëns, the Danse Macabre and a Rêverie Orientale, Massenet, an unpublished Hungarian march; Guiraud, his Carnaval; Delibes, the Valse lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss had sung the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani; and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia.
But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daaé, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in Faust, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it.
Daaé revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to it its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daaé had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita. And it had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daaé, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the programme reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daaé, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment. She had often said she meant to practice alone for the future. The whole thing was a mystery.
”
”
Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)