the noble effect the Building will have to posterity
“In Architecture, he builds not with so much regard to present symmetry or conveniency, as with a Thought well worthy a true lover of Antiquity, to wit, the noble effect the Building will have to posterity, when it shall fall and become a Ruin.”
—The Scriblerus Club (John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell and Robert Harley), Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, 1723.
the most wonderful space ship in all creation!
“‘You want to fly through space’ God has already given you the most wonderful space ship in all creation! Yes! Speed? You want speed? The space ship God has given you goes sixty-six thousand miles an hour—and will keep on running at that speed for all eternity, if God wills it. You want a space ship that will carry men in comfort? . . . He’s given you a space ship that will carry billions of men, women and children! Yes! And they don’t have to stay strapped in chairs or wear fishbowls over their heads. No! Not on God’s space ship. The people on God’s space ship can go swimming, and walk in the sunshine and play baseball and go ice skating and go for family rides in the family automobile on Sunday after church and a family chicken dinner!’”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr; Reverend Bobby Denton, from The Sirens of Titan, 1959.
jolly old St. Nick
“The jolly old St. Nick that we know from countless images did not come from folklore. . . . He came from the yearly advertisements of the Coca-Cola Company. He wears the corporate colors—the famous red and white—for a reason: he is working out of Atlanta, not out of the North Pole.”
—James B. Twitchell, from Twenty Ads that Shook the World, 2000.
the most compressed diamond of a headline
“‘Each memory in turn is treasured in the lovely, lighted depths of her engagement diamond, to be an endless source of happy inspiration. For such a radiant role, her diamond need not be costly or of many carats, but it must be chosen with care.’. . .
It was from the exhaustion of writing such carbonated prose [for De Beers diamonds] that the most compressed diamond of a headline was formed. In April of 1947, Frances Gerety was laboring mightily. . . . She was exhausted from trying to come up with a new line that would bring together all the intrinsic and romantic qualities of the diamond and have it not make any sense whatsoever. . . . ‘Dog tired, I put my head down and said, ‘Please God, send me a line.’’ He must have because she wrote, ‘A Diamond Is Forever.’”
—James B. Twitchell, from Twenty Ads that Shook the World, 2000.
A poor black cat
“The ivy had grown so profusely that many windows were now sealed up. The kitchen was so dark that they could scarcely tell a kettle from a cullender. A poor black cat had been mistaken for coals and shovelled on the fire. Most of the maids were already wearing three or four red-flannel petticoats, though the month was August.”
—Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.
the Ambassador’s bedroom
“She, who believed in no immortality, could not help feeling that her soul would come and go for ever with the reds on the panels and the greens on the sofa. For the room—she had strolled into the Ambassador’s bedroom—shone like a shell that has lain at the bottom of the sea for centuries and has been crusted over and painted a million tints by the water; it was rose and yellow, green and sand-coloured. It was frail as a shell, as iridescent and as empty.”
—Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.
the serpent in the Poet’s Eden
“The letter S, she reflected, is the serpent in the Poet’s Eden. Do what she would there were still too many of these sinful reptiles in the first stanzas of “The Oak Tree.””
—Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928. S is the serpent in the Font Designer’s Eden, as well.
ringed with gold
“It now seemed to her that the whole world was ringed with gold. She went in to dinner. Wedding rings abounded. She went to church. Wedding rings were everywhere. She drove out. Gold, or pinchbeck, thin, thick, plain, smooth, they glowed dully on every hand. Rings filled the jewellers’ shops, not the flashing pastes and diamonds of Orlando’s recollections, but simple bands without a stone in them.”
—Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.
Clorinda
“Clorinda was a sweet-mannered gentle lady enough;—indeed Orlando was greatly taken with her for six months and a half; but she had white eyelashes and could not bear the sight of blood.”
—Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.
“The sky is blue”
“‘The sky is blue,’ he said, ‘the grass is green.’ Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. ‘Upon my word,’ he said . . . ‘I don’t see that one’s more true than another. Both are utterly false.’”
—Virginia Wolfe, from Orlando, 1928.