Vincent van Gogh Self Portrait painting

Vincent van Gogh Self Portrait paintingVincent van Gogh Sunflowers paintingVincent van Gogh The Starry Night painting
really might have jarred some foolishness out of the fellow." Smiling at his wife he said then, "Mind if I cut in? Then we'll all have dinner."
Mrs. Sear did not reply: upon Anastasia's sitting up she had gone glassy-eyed, and slumped now quite insensible upon the dark beacon of George's Gorge, that had called G. Herrold to his end.
Anastasia shook her head. "I don'tlike this Conscious Depravity It's been avery upsetting day!" Awed by my feelings, I watched her fasten up her clothes once more. Dr. Sear gave me an amiable wry look -- an invitation, as I thought, to exercise my will upon her as I knew I could. But I said that I too had spent a toilsome day, by no means over, and had no appetite except for food. He shrugged, lit a cigarette, and repeated his dinner invitation.
"A drink will perk Heddy up, and we'll ask Greene to come along if we can wake him."
Anastasia at first declined on the grounds that her husband, who "hadn't been himself at all" during lunch, might be expecting her at Home, and that she would

Guido Reni Baptism of Christ painting

Guido Reni Baptism of Christ paintingGuido Reni reni Aurora paintingFrancois Boucher The Toilet of Venus painting
The second distinction he'd also mentioned in his speech of the morning: the difference between questioning means and questioning ends; between the criticism of operations and the challenging of first principles. The University, he insisted again, made what sense it made only when one accepted certain first principles without question. "You remember the old story about the Chancellor's New Gown, that the tailors claimed was invisible to cuckolds? Well, I say the truth of it is that hewas robed until that kindergartener said he wasn't. The people laughed at him then and punished the tailors for fraud, because the alternative was to admit that theywere all cuckolds, every one, including the Chancellor himself." I noticed that he blushed at this point. "As for the child: if he was too young to be cuckolded, he was too young to understand a robe invisible to cuckolds. That doesn't make him right. There are plenty of things on campus that can't be seen until you've learned to see them, and some of the most important disappear when you look at them directly, or too closely. It doesn't follow that they aren't there." He reaffirmed his criticism of the author ofTaliped Decanus: "The fact is, Taliped was a good father and husband and a good dean until he let his basic research go too far: the playwright cheats by pretending that a

Thomas Kinkade Stairway to Paradise painting

Thomas Kinkade Stairway to Paradise paintingThomas Kinkade Spirit of Christmas paintingThomas Kinkade San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf painting
that I was of their fraternity; were frankly envious, in fact, of my garment, stick, and bagful of tokens; and while their position, as I understood it, struck me as something wanting in consistency, they were clearly earnest, and I was grateful for their goodwill. However, there was no clarity between us. They knew who I was, but would not accept it that I had truly only one name, for example, and was literally half goat by training. "We dig those symbols," they assured me. And when I confessed that I couldn't make out their argot, they thanked me for reminding them that the Answer lay in wordless Being rather than in verbal formulas. Yet their own inclination was plainly towards the latter.
"How do you go about doingyour Assignments?" I asked them. "Mine saysComplete at once . . ." Some ely practical advice was what I sought, as one undergraduate to another; but they responded with disputation as passionate and abstruse as if I'd posed Dean Taliped's riddle.

Edvard Munch Madonna painting

Edvard Munch Madonna paintingAlbert Moore silver paintingRene Magritte The Blank Check painting
door whereon my flashlight showed the wordGRATEWAY ; it opened of itself at our approach. From the dim interior beyond, a clicking voice said "Prospective Candidates only, please," and a second -- familiar also, but huskily, womanly human -- added, "It's all right, George; He means you."
"I'll wait for you out here," said my forelocked escort. But now my eyes had accommodated to the flickering instrument-panels and Telerama screens of the Grateway antechamber, I saw not only Harold Bray and Anastasia, perched on twin stools at a massive console, but behind them Scrapegoat Grate itself, a thick portcullis let into the chamber wall. Beyond it, squared by that iron weft and strangely dark, Great Mall's elmed colonnade stretched out of sight.
"I won't be coming back," I told him.
He clucked his tongue. "Well. We'll see."
I stepped in, and the door closed at once. Like the Powerhouse Control Room, and to some extent Eierkopf's Observatory, the Grateway antechamber was

John William Waterhouse In the Peristyle painting

John William Waterhouse In the Peristyle paintingJohn Singer Sargent A Dinner Table at Night paintingLord Frederick Leighton Leighton Winding the Skein painting
What happened in fact was that the bald eye of the scanner scanned in vain, the stile moved on, and I was squeezed past the points of the standing teeth, which I cleared so narrowly that one ran into the armhole of my wrapper, another under my amulet-of-Freddie. I was inside then, but caught fast, and twisting to unhook myself managed only to catch my collar on a third tooth. No one could touch me: some laughed, others clapped hands, Peter Greene's voice behind me cried, "By George, He done it, fair and square!" and officials whom I couldn't turn to see fussed about, berating Murphy. Again the scanner dipped to face me; I smiled politely, but had no card to show. The Turnstile clicked and ground on, either to trap the next athlete or to deal with me. Girls squealed; the next row of teeth came through and pressed so hard against my back, I thought I must be sliced like Eblis Eierkopf's hard-boiled eggs. But that foreseam I had started (wrestling with Croaker in George's Gorge) now gave way with a rip from neck to hem, my knit-wool liner with it; the stile jerked on, the thong of my amulet parted, and for the second time those hides as dear to me as my own were sacrificed. Clad now in mine alone I was propelled onto Great Mall and into the arms of two sooty patrolmen who rushed up.

Vincent van Gogh Lane with Poplars painting

Vincent van Gogh Lane with Poplars paintingGeorge Frederick Watts Orpheus and Eurydice detail paintingUnknown Artist The SunFlowers painting
There's nothing strange in that; it is
among a dean's responsibilities.
He set out by himself, then? Please speak faster.

BROTHER-IN-LAW: Alone he wasn't. Besides the wagonmaster
he took his secretary --quite a peach,
she was --his valet, P. R. man, and speech-
writer. Five men and the girl, and all
but one was killed.

TALIPED: I guess it was the doll
who got away?

BROTHER-IN-LAW: I wish she had, old pal; it
should have been the girl and not the valet
who escaped. The way that kid could walk!

TALIPED: All right, all right; forget her. Did you talk
to this one chap, this valet who got away?

BROTHER-IN-LAW:I did. But all the yellow wretch could say
for himself was that he wished he'd never been
promoted from his old job by the Dean --
he'd used to be a shepherd, and he said
he wished he'd never valeted instead.
I guess he had no stomach for such snobbery. . .

TALIPED: Flunk his stomach! Was it highway robbery,

Vincent van Gogh Vase with Daisies and Anemones painting

Vincent van Gogh Vase with Daisies and Anemones paintingVincent van Gogh The Starry Night 2 paintingVincent van Gogh The Church in Auvers painting
possiblydesigned for that task, as who should call a man uniquely designed to play championship tennis, without implying either a designer or that he will ever take racket in hand. If I chose to regard myself as a Grand Tutor, that was my affair; Max would not split hairs. But if I or Sear or anyone maintained that there was something to herohood or Commencement beyond this unglamorous definition -- somethingmagical ortranscendental -- then we must excuse him, he had no patience with such notions.
"We quite excuse you!" Dr. Sear insisted cordially, "Don't we, George?"
I confessed I wasn't sure I grasped Max's point, and that I considered it anyhowless to understand than to perform my task, which was immediately to get through Scrapegoat Grate and then to do what I'd come to the campus for: to pass all or fail all. They both seemed pleased with this reply, and fortunately didn't ask for an explanation of that dark imperative from my PAT-card, which I could not then clearly have given them. The Amphitheater was quite filled now, and the floodlights dimmed. People hushed and coughed. Dr. Sear lowered his dry voice to remind Max that not much if any

Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Valley painting

Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Valley paintingClaude Monet The Red Boats Argenteuil paintingClaude Monet Monet The Luncheon painting
strayed off the shoulder onto the pavement or trespassed inadvertently against the right-of-way; otherwise, however, young and old roared past without a curious glance -- as if a fleeced goat-boy, astride a black giant and accompanied by a bearded old Moishian, were to be seen at every interchange!Stadium, the largest building of all, a floodlit multistoried cube of enormous dimension with a featureless limestone facade.
"Military science," Max said grimly. "And out past Tower Hall, the last big building to the south -- see those four turrets with the searchlights? That's Main Detention, where I spent my last night before they sent me
Not until we turned from the highway onto the apron of the promised eating-place did anyone really notice us: the evening was warm, and a throng of young couples had drawn their machines up to the Pedal Inn

Edvard Munch Puberty 1894 painting

Edvard Munch Puberty 1894 paintingEdvard Munch Madonna paintingAlbert Moore silver painting
Anastasia in her embarrassment had touched her brow to my arm (Stoker having sprung out from between us to illustrate the dance he had in mind), and thinking to assure her that her husband's talk did not distress me, innocently I patted her behind, as was my wont when any lady of the herd needed calming. She looked up at me with quick wonder, also squeezed my arm uncertainly, and Stoker broke off his raillery to shout with laughter.
"Olé!"some others called.
"Stop!" Max commanded, stamping his feet.
"No no, Maxie, he just started! Watch he doesn't eat your hair-pins, Stacey; they eat anything, you know. Not like your gorilla-friend. . ."
"I don't listen!" Max cried, and covered his ears once more. To me he said desperately, "Pat her on the head, you got to pat her! It's different with human girls!" Then to Stoker, more determinedly: "I'm not her father, Stoker, much as I wish I was. But neither she nor Georgie's going with you. You got to kill me first."
Anastasia made a flutter of protest; Stoker laughed delightedly

Claude Monet The Red Boats Argenteuil painting

Claude Monet The Red Boats Argenteuil paintingClaude Monet Monet The Luncheon paintingClaude Monet Monet Water Lillies I painting
monstrously wobbling uswards now with its sprawl of eyes, mad hoots, and growling throats. Max too was startled, and clambered to his feet; Croaker let go my stick and crouched under me with a grunt -- whether of defiance or fright I could not judge. Only Anastasia seemed not especially anxious; she frowned at the snarling lights more in disapproval than in fear, and remained in her place by the fire.
"He always has to do thingsdramatically," she complained.
"Those are motorcycles," Max muttered to me. "Ten or twelve separate ones. The noise is their motors and horns."
I was at once unspeakably relieved, for though I'd seldom actually seen motorcycles, I understood them well enough. As they drew nearer, the firelight revealed a party of humans in black leather jackets, variously ornamented with silver studs and bright glass jewels. Goggled and helmeted, each was mounted upon a gleaming black machine with sidecar attached. They drew up in a rough half-circle around us, engines guttering: piled up, rather, for there was no precision in the maneuver. The lead cyclist -- a bearded, sooty fellow -- braked abruptly with a spray of sand and no prior warning; the second

Edgar Degas Absinthe painting

Edgar Degas Absinthe paintingFrida Kahlo The Broken Column paintingFrida Kahlo Self Portrait painting
So it's probably okay," he concluded. "G. Herrold won't do you any harm, and I been in proctoscopy long enough to be broad-minded."
"I knew it was supposed to be flunkèd," I confessed, "but I enjoyed it anyhow."
"That don't matter, Georgie. What flunkèdness is, it's not doing what you're not supposed to do; flunkèdness is to do itbecause you're not supposed to, and perverseness is to like itbecause you know it's flunkèd. 'Even though' is okay; 'because' is flunkèd."
"So I'm still a Grand Tutor," I said happily. "I knew I was."
Max smiled and to my pleasure agreed at least that my disporting with G. Herrold, done as it was innocently and in good faith, didn'trefute my claim. "Take the goats, now, for instance," he said: "how come you never humped yourself a doeling since you were a youngster? You were sweet on Hedda once,nicht wahr? And a nanny is not bad, you know, for a goat. But you got no taste for them since you learned you're a human person, isn't that so?"
I acknowledged that it was.

Johannes Vermeer The Love letter painting

Johannes Vermeer The Love letter paintingGustav Klimt The Virgin paintingGustav Klimt dancer painting
Stated thus, the movement won a host of converts not only among the stupid and oppressed but among the intelligent as well, who saw in its selflessness an alternative to the tawdry hucksterism of the "its worst -- where Logic Departments exhorted one in red neon toSyllogize One'sWeight Away, and metaphysicians advertised by wireless thatThe Chap Who Can Philosophize Never Ossifies. Max confessed that he himself, as a freshman, had belonged like many intellectual Moishians to a Student-Unionist organization -- a fact which was to plague him in later lduring Campus Riot I, had overthrown their despotic chancellor and established the first Student-Unionist regime.
"It wasn't till later," he declared sadly, "we saw that the 'Sovereignty of the Bottom Percentile' was just another absolute chancellorship, with some pastry-cook or industrial-arts teacher in charge. The great failing of Informationalism is selfishness; but what the Student-Unionists do, they exchange the selfish student for a selfish Self they're always lecturing about -- it's just as greedy and grasping as Ira Hector, the richest Informationalist in New Tammany." He shook his head. "You know what, Billy, I don't

Rene Magritte Donna painting

Rene Magritte Donna paintingArthur Hughes The King's Orchard paintingArthur Hughes Phyllis painting
Indulge me now, as a useful introduction to the opus proper, the story of its origin and my coming by it. As you may know, like most of our authors these days I support myself by preaching what I practice. One grows used, in fiction-writing seminaries, to three chief categories of students: elder ladies and climacteric gentlemen who an avocation which too might supplement their pensions; well-groomed and intelligent young literature-majors of various sexes who have a flair; and those intensely marginal souls -- underdisciplined, oversensitive, disordered in both appearance and reality -- whose huge craving for the state of artist-hood may drive them so far in rare instances as actually to work at making pieces of art. It was one of this third sort, I assumed, who came into my office on a gusty fall evening several terms ago with a box of typescript under his arm and a gleam in his face.
I'd not seen him before -- but then, these bohemians appear and vanish like spooks, change their aspect at the merest whim (quite as does the creature calledHarold Bray hereinafter), and have often the most tenuous connection with their Departments

Rembrandt The Sacrifice of Abraham painting

Rembrandt The Sacrifice of Abraham paintingJohn Singer Sargent A Morning Walk painting
absolutely, they have another cocktail and return to more agreeable matters.
Consider the difference withR.N.S. : here fornication, adultery, even rape, yea murder itself (not to mention self-deception, treason, blasphemy, whoredom, duplicity, and willful cruelty to others) are not only represented for our delectation but at times approved of and even recommended! On aesthetic grounds too (though they pale before the moral), the work is objectionable: the rhetoric is extreme, the conceit and action wildly implausible, the interpretation of history shallow and patently biased, the narrative full of discrepancies and badly paced, at times tedious, more often excessive; the form, like the style, is unorthodox, unsymmetrical, inconsistent. The characters, especially the hero, are unrealistic. There never was a Goat-boy! There never will be!
In sum it is a bad book, a wicked book, and ought not -- I will saymust

Titian Saint Christopher painting

Titian Saint Christopher paintingFrancisco de Goya The Parasol painting
leader—he had him beaten, going and coming. Nothing could be worse than what Mannix was doing—adding to a disaster already ordained (Culver somehow sensed) the burden of his vicious fury. At least let up, the men had had enough. But his mind was confused. His kidneys were aching as if they had been pounded with a mallet, and he walked along now with his hands on his waist, like a professor lecturing in a classroom, coattails over his arms. And for the first time he felt intolerably hot—with a heat that contributed to his mounting fury. At night they had sweated more from exertion; the coolness of the evening had been at least some solace, but the morning's sun began to flagellate him anew, adding curious sharp blades of pain to the furious frustration boiling inside him. Frustration at the fact that he was not independent enough, nor possessed of enough free will, was not man enough to say, to hell with it and crap out himself; that he was not man enough to disavow all his determination and endurance and suffering, cash in his chips, and by that act flaunt his contempt of the march, the Colonel, the whole bloody Marine Corps. But he was not man enough, he knew, far less simply a free man; he was just a marine—as was Mannix, and so many of the others—and they had been marines, it seemed, all their lives, would go on being marines forever; and the frustration implicit in this thought

Georges Seurat The Circus painting

Georges Seurat The Circus paintingGeorges Seurat Le Chahut painting
spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said 'Bother!' The Social Round. Always something going on."Nobody was listening, for they were all saying, "Open it, Pooh," "What is it, Pooh?" "I know what it is," "No, you don't," and other helpful remarks of this sort. And of course Pooh was opening it as quickly as ever he could, but without cutting the string, because you never know when a bit of string might be Useful. At last it was undone. When Pooh saw what it was, he nearly fell down, he was so pleased. It was a Special Pencil Case. There were pencils in it marked "B" for Bear, and pencils marked "HB " for Helping Bear, and pencils marked "BB" for Brave Bear. There was a knife for sharpening the pencils, and indiarubber for rubbing out anything which you had spelt wrong, and a ruler for ruling lines for the words to walk on, and inches marked on the ruler in case you wanted to know how many inches anything was, and Blue Pencils and Red Pencils and Green Pencils for saying special things in blue and red and green. And all these lovely things were in little pockets of their own in a

Frida Kahlo Fruits of the Earth painting

Frida Kahlo Fruits of the Earth paintingFrida Kahlo Diego and I paintingDouglas Hofmann Model painting
think," said Piglet, when he had licked the tip of his nose too, and found that it brought very little comfort, "I think that I have just remembered something. I have just remembered something that I forgot to do yesterday and sha'n't be able to do to-morrow. So I suppose I really ought to go back and do it now." FACE="Arial"> "We'll do it this afternoon, and I'll come with you," said Pooh. "It iBetween, as I was saying, the hours of twelve and twelve five. So, really, dear old Pooh, if you'll excuse me-- What's that." Pooh looked up at the sky, and then, as he heard the whistle again, he looked up into the branches of a big oak-tree, and then he saw a friend of his. "It's Christopher Robin," he said. "Ah, then you'll be all right," said Piglet. sn't the sort of thing you can do in the afternoon," said Piglet quickly. "It's a very particular morning thing, that has to be done in the morning, and, if possible, between the hours of What would you say the time was?" "About twelve," said Winnie-the-Pooh, looking at the sun.

Pierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath painting

Pierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath paintingPierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath 1888 paintingJohn William Waterhouse Odysseus and the Sirens painting
HERE is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumpThen you can't call him Winnie?" "I don't." "But you said--" "He's Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don't you know what 'ther' means?" "Ah, yes, now I do," I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get. Sometimes of some sort when he comes downstairs, and sometimes he likes to sit quietly in front of the fire and listen to a story. This evening-- "What about a story?" said Christopher Robin. "What about a story?" I said. "Could you very sweetly tell Winnie-the-Pooh one?" "I suppose I could," I said. "What sort of stories does he like?" "About himself. Because he's that sort of Bear." "Oh, I see." "So could you very sweetly?" "I'll try," I said. ing for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't. Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you. Winnie-the-Pooh. When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, "But I thought he was a boy?" "So did I," said Christopher Robin

Gustav Klimt The Embrace (detail_ square) painting

Gustav Klimt The Embrace (detail_ square) paintingGustav Klimt The Beethoven Frieze paintingGustav Klimt Schloss Kammer Am Attersee II painting
switched his tail and made an odd sound that was neither a miaow nor a purr.
"I will go with you," Molly said. "I don't know the way down to the Bull either, but there must be one. Schmendrick will come too. He'll make the way for us if we can't find it."
"I hope for no help from the magician," the Lady Amalthea replied disdainfully. "I see him every day playing the fool for King Haggard, amusing him by his failures, by blundering at even the most trifling trick. He says that it is all he can do until his power speaks in him again. But it never .will. He is no magician now, but the king's clown."
Molly's face suddenly hurt her, and she turned away to inspect the soup again. Answering past a sharpness in her throat, she said, "He is doing it for you. While you brood and mope and become someone else, he jigs and jests for Haggard, diverting him so that you may have time to find your folk, if they are to be found. But it cannot be long before the king tires of him, as he tires of all things, and casts him down to his dungeons, or some place darker. You do wrong to mock him."
Her voice was a child's thin, sad mumble. She said, "But that will never happen to

Eric Wallis Lilies and Iris painting

Eric Wallis Lilies and Iris paintingEric Wallis Her Own Time paintingEric Wallis Flowers Everywhere painting
have not told you all the truth. Twenty-one years ago, a child was born in Hagsgate. Whose child it was, we never knew. I found it myself, as I was crossing the marketplace one winter's night. It was lying on a butcher's block, not crying, although there was snow, but warm and chuckling under a comforter of stray cats. They were all purring together, and the sound was heavy with knowledge. I stood by the strange cradle for a long time, pondering while the snow fell and the cats purred prophecy."
He stopped, and Molly Grue said eagerly, "You , of course, and raised it as your own." Drinn laid his hands palm up on the table.
"I chased the cats away," he said, "and ." Molly's face turned the color of mist. Drinn shrugged slightly. "I know the birth of a hero when I see it," he said. "Omens and portents, snakes in the nursery. Had it not been for the cats, I might have chanced the child, but they made it so obvious, so mythological. What was I to do—knowingly harbor Hagsgate's doom?" His lip twitched, as though a hook had set in it. "As it happens, I erred, but it was on the side of tenderness. When

Alphonse Maria Mucha Winter painting

Alphonse Maria Mucha Winter paintingAlphonse Maria Mucha Morning Star paintingAlphonse Maria Mucha Monaco Monte Carlo painting
, whats going on, 2006, mario and nasty, brand new classic, ride with us, its about two guys and hotgirls, yo keep it up keep it up, two step with me, come on, lets do it do it do it like this 1,2 baby clap ur hands Everybody lets go ha ha ha ha I want yall ladies clap again Let me hear u say wut wut 우리 단둘이; its my story 또 너의 맘Ᏺ0; 흠이 내 눈4032;의 눈물이 너와의 시간;은 너무나ᇺ0; 길어 너무 4600;어 따뜻한 나의; 맘으로 돌ǹ00;오길 빌어 the ghetto 너의 맘3060; 끌리는 대로 넌 그대로never say goodbye so get up if you go away you will see me cry don\ t you let me go baby don\ t you let me down 늘 함께 있Ꮕ2;도 더 가깝3648; 않은 어떤 의미도; 없는 진부Ȣ20; 사랑 don\ t you let me go baby don\ t you let me down you never say good bye 한동안 멍하;니 우두커ᇠ8; 앉아 다시 생각했;지만 멈출 순 없ᅃ2;어 온통 그대 ፉ3;각 할 수밖2640; 없는 내 자신이 ዌ0;워 don\ t you let me go baby don\ t you let me down (Mario) And we the best aint no need to stress Mario and nasty aint no need to impress (보람)Yo! 너의 맘을 받아 나;Ꮿ

George Frederick Watts Orlando Pursuing the Fata Morgana painting

George Frederick Watts Orlando Pursuing the Fata Morgana paintingGeorge Frederick Watts Watts Choosing paintingFrancisco de Zurbaran Still life with Oranges painting
sea just by stretching of itself, what's to keep it from crawling off wearing your whole show like a necklace?" There were murmurs of agreement, and some of the murmurers began to back warily away.
"I'm glad you asked me that, friend," Rukh said with a scowl. "It just so happens that the Midgard Serpent exists in like another space from ours, another dimension. NorSpells of seeming," the unicorn said. "She cannot make things."
"Nor truly change them," added the magician. "Her shabby skill lies in disguise. And even that knack would be beyond her, if it weren't for the eagerness of those gulls, those marks, to believe whatever comes easiest. She can't turn cream into butter, but she can give a lion the semblance of a manticore to mally, therefore, he's invisible, but dragged into our world—as Thor hooked him once—he shows clear as lightning, which also visits us from somewhere else, where it might look quite different. And naturally he might turn nasty if he knew that a bit of his tummy slack was on view daily and Sundays in Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival. But he don't know. He's got other things to think about than what becomes of his belly button, and we take our chances—as do you all—on his continued tranquillity." He rolled and stretched the last word like dough, and his hearers laughed carefully.

Juarez Machado Champagne Waiter painting

Juarez Machado Champagne Waiter paintingJuarez Machado Barbecue a Paris paintingWassily Kandinsky Upward painting
forest, swift
and shining, passing through sudden clearings unbearably brilliant with grass or soft with shadow, aware of everything around her, from the weeds that brushed her ankles to insect-quick flickers of blue and silver as the wind lifted the leaves. "Oh, I could never leave this, I never could, not if I really were the only unicorn in the world. I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this again?"From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms. "I will not go. Because men have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean they have all vanished. Even if it were true, I would not go. I live here."
But when she stopped running at last and stood still, listening to crows and a quarrel of squirrels over her head, she wondered, But suppose they are riding together, somewhere far away? What if they are hiding and waiting for me?

Thomas Kinkade Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco painting

Thomas Kinkade Golden Gate Bridge San Francisco paintingThomas Kinkade Evening on the Avenue paintingThomas Kinkade Deer Creek Cottage painting
the entry for a syllable in Chinese dictionaries. A spoken Chinese syllable, hsing or lung, may have dozens of meanings; but it's still a word, even though its meaning depends to some extent on context, and even if it takes fifty different written characters to express the different meanings. Each different meaning of the syllable is in fact a different word, an entity, a pebble in the great riverbed of the language.
A Nna Mmoy syllable only has one written character. But it's not a pebble. It's a drop in the river.
Learning Nna Mmoy is like learning to weave water. I believe it's just as difficult for them to learn their language as it is for us. But then, they have enough time, so it doesn't matter. Their lives don't start here and run to there, like ours, like horses on a racecourse. They live in the middle of time, like a starfish in its own center. Like the sun in its light.
What little I know of the language—and I'm not really certain of any of it,

Claude Monet Snow at Argenteuil painting

Claude Monet Snow at Argenteuil paintingClaude Monet Poplars on the Banks of the Epte paintingClaude Monet Mountains at l'Esterel painting
become their own as they dream it. Each dream may be shaped differently in each mind. And, as with us, the personality of the dreamer, the oneiric I, is often tenuous, strangely disguised, or unpredictably different from the daylight person. Very puzzling dreams or those with powerful emotional affect may be discussed on and off all day by the community, without the origin of the dream ever being mentioned.
But most dreams, as with us, are forgotten at waking. Dreams elude their dreamers on every plane.
It might seem to us that the Frin have very little psychic privacy; but they are protected by this common amnesia, as well as by doubt as to any particular dream's origin and by the obscurity of dream itself. Their dreams are truly common property. The sight of a red-and-black bird pecking at the ear of a bearded human head lying on a plate on a marble table and the rush of almost gleeful horror that accompanied it—did that come from Aunt Unia's sleep, or Uncle Tu's, or

Maxfield Parrish paintings

Maxfield Parrish paintings
Martin Johnson Heade paintings
Nancy O'Toole paintings
child, but both parents feed it, both nurture it. Why should a child be left to the mother only? They asked that. How could a woman alone bring up four children? Or more than four children? It was inhuman. And then, in the cities, why should families stay together? The child doesn't want its parents then, the parents don't want the child, they all have other things to do... The women talked about this to us men, and with them we tried to talk about it to the Bayderac.
"They said, 'All that will change. You will see. You cannot reason correctly. It is merely an effect of your hormones, your genetic programming, which we will correct. Then you will be free of your irrational and useless behavior patterns.'
"We answered, 'But will we be free of your irrational and useless behavior patterns?'

Claude Monet Poplars painting

Claude Monet Poplars paintingClaude Monet La Grenouillere paintingClaude Monet Cliffs Near Dieppe painting
That after her orgasm the woman is less magnetic, enthused and delightful as a partner, enjoys the Karezza less, and quite often soon becomes indifferent, depressed or irritable.
That indulgence in the orgasm on either side cultivates the merely sexual at the expense of the affectional, the romantic, the spiritual.
As I know that a woman who has known the perfect orgasm may deliberately abandon its practice completely in favor of Karezza, on the ground of its being less satisfying than Karezza minus all orgasm, and as I know that women who have never in all their lives had an orgasm may be beautifully satisfied and blissfully happy as well in Karezza without it, and this more and more as the years go on, I feel that I have good grounds for saying that I believe the orgasm in the woman is entirely unnecessary and artificial and that she is better off without it.
The ordinary male orgasmal embrace seldom satisfies the woman. It is too brief and animal for her. And if she is not satisfied in sex of course she suffers. But if she can have the orgasm

Gustav Klimt The Virgin painting

Gustav Klimt The Virgin paintingGustav Klimt dancer paintingGustav Klimt Adam and Eve painting
There is a physical help which the woman may render at the very outset which is important. It often happens at the beginning of penetration that the labia, one or both of them, are infolded, or pushed in, acting as an impediment and lessening pleasure or causing a disagreeable sensation. If the woman, before penetration begins, will, with her fingers, reach in and open wide the lips, drawing them upward and outward the fullest extent, she will greatly facilitate entrance, and if she will several times repeat this during the Karezza, each time drawing the inner labia outward, while her partner presses inward, it will be found greatly to increase the contact surface and conscious enjoyment, giving a greater sense of ease and attainment.
If a woman by intuitional genius or acquired skill does the right thing, her passion is a food and a stimulus to the man, filling him with a triumphant pride. He is lifted, as it were, by a deep tide, on which he floats buoyantly and exultantly, like a seabird on a wave. Under such

Pierre Auguste Renoir Dance in the Country painting

Pierre Auguste Renoir Dance in the Country paintingPierre Auguste Renoir Dance in the City paintingAlexandre Cabanel Fallen Angel painting
'Severus ...'
The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.
Snape said nothing, but walked forwards and pushed Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed.
Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.
'Severus ... please ..."
Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.
'Avada Kedavra!'
A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape's wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry's scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air: for a split second he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backwards, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.
Chapter 28: Flight of the Prince

Gustav Klimt Hygieia (II) painting

Gustav Klimt Hygieia (II) paintingGustav Klimt Goldfish (detail) paintingGustav Klimt Beethoven Frieze painting
cursed necklace that was bound to reach the wrong hands ... poisoning mead there was only the slightest chance I might drink ...'
'Yeah, well, you still didn't realise who was behind that stuff, did you?' sneered Malfoy, as Dumbledore slid a little down the ramparts, the strength in his legs apparently fading, and Harry struggled fruitlessly, mutely, against the enchantment binding him.
'As a matter of fact, I did,' said Dumbledore. 'I was sure it was you.'
'Why didn't you stop me, then?' Malfoy demanded.
'I tried, Draco. Professor Snape has been keeping watch over you on my orders -'
'He hasn't been doing your orders, he promised my mother -'
'Of course that is what he would tell you, Draco, but -'
'He's a double-agent, you stupid old man, he isn't working for you, you just think he is!'
'We must agree to differ on that, Draco. It so happens that I trust Professor Snape -'

William Blake Nebuchadnezzar painting

William Blake Nebuchadnezzar paintingWilliam Blake Los painting
'Again and again, no matter how I lay them out -'
And she pulled a card dramatically from underneath her shawls.
'- the lightning-struck tower,' she whispered. 'Calamity. Disaster. Coming nearer all the time ...'
'Right,' said Harry again. 'Well ... I still think you should tell Dumbledore about this voice and everything going dark and being thrown out of the Room ...'
'You think so?' Professor Trelawney seemed to consider the matter for a moment, but Harry could tell that she liked the idea of retelling her little adventure.
'I'm going to see him right now,' said Harry. 'I've got a meeting with him. We could go together.'
'Oh, well, in that case,' said Professor Trelawney with a smile. She bent down, scooped up her sherry bottles and dumped them unceremoniously in a large blue and white vase standing in a nearby niche.
'I miss having you in my classes, Harry,' she said soulfully, as they set off together

George Frederick Watts The Three Graces painting

George Frederick Watts The Three Graces paintingGeorge Frederick Watts Charity painting
pretty upset. . . But you won't tell anyone, Professor? I don't want trouble for him. ..."
Slughorn's curiosity was evidently aroused. "Well, I can't promise that," he said gruffly. "But I know that Dumbledore trusts Hagrid to the hilt, so I'm sure he can't be up to anything very dreadful. .."
"Well, it's this giant spider, he's had it for years. ... It lived in the forest. ... It could talk and everything —"
"I heard rumors there were acromantulas in the forest," said Slughorn softly, looking over at the mass of black trees. "It's true, then?"
"Yes," said Harry. "But this one, Aragog, the first one Hagrid ever got, it died last night. He's devastated. He wants company while he buries it and I said I'd go."
"Touching, touching," said Slughorn absentmindedly, his large droopy eyes fixed upon the distant lights of Hagrid's cabin. "But acromantula venom is very valuable ... If the beast only just died it might not yet have dried out. . . . Of course, I wouldn't want to do anything insensitive if Hagrid is upset. . . but if there was any way to procure some ... I mean, its almost impossible to get venom from an acromantula while its alive. ..."

Salvador Dali Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate painting

Salvador Dali Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate paintingSalvador Dali Bacchanale painting
contact with Kreacher. "That was another Prince hex, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," said Harry, twisting Kreacher's wizened arm into a half nelson. "Right — I'm forbidding you to fight each other! Well, Kreacher, you're forbidden to fight Dobby. Dobby, I know I'm not allowed to give you orders —"
"Dobby is a free house-elf and he can obey anyone he likes and Dobby will do whatever Harry Potter wants him to do!" said Dobby, tears now streaming down his shriveled little face onto his jumper.
"Okay then," said Harry, and he and Ron both released the elves, who fell to the floor but did not continue fighting.

Johannes Vermeer The Love letter painting

Johannes Vermeer The Love letter paintingGustav Klimt The Virgin painting
took Harry only five minutes to realise that his reputa-tion as the best potion-maker in the class was crashing around his ears. Slughorn had peered hopefully into his cauldron on his first circuit of the dungeon, preparing to exclaim in delight as he usually did, and instead had with-drawn his head hastily, coughing, as the smell of bad eggs overwhelmed him. Hermione's expression could not have been any smugger; she had loathed being out-performed in every Potions class. She was now decanting the mysteriously separated ingredients of her poison into ten different crystal phials. More to avoid watching this irritating sight than any-thing else, Harry bent over the Half-Blood Prince's book and turned a few pages with unnecessary force.
And there it was, scrawled right across a long list of antidotes.
Just shove a bezoar down their throats.

Georges Seurat The Circus painting

Georges Seurat The Circus paintingGeorges Seurat Le Chahut painting
And now, Harry, I must insist that we press on. I have more important things to discuss with you this evening."
Harry sat there feeling mutinous. How would it be if he refused to permit the change of subject, if he insisted upon arguing the case against Malfoy? As though he had read Harry's mind, Dumbledore shook his head.
"Ah, Harry, how often this happens, even between the best of friends! Each of us believes that what he has to say is much more important than anything the other might have to contribute!"
"I don't think what you've got to say is unimportant, sir," said Harry stiffly.
"Well, you are quite right, because it is not," said Dumbledore briskly. "I have two more memories to show you this evening, both obtained with enormous difficulty, and the second of them is, 1 think, the most important I have collected."

Pierre Auguste Renoir Dance in the City painting

Pierre Auguste Renoir Dance in the City paintingAlexandre Cabanel Fallen Angel paintingAlexandre Cabanel Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners painting
Harry! There you are, thank goodness! Hi, Luna !"
"What's happened to you?" asked Harry, for Hermione looked distinctly disheveled, rather as though she had just fought her way out of a thicket of Devil's Snare.
"Oh, I've just escaped — I mean, I've just left Cormac," she said. "Under the mistletoe," she added in explanation, as Harry continued to look questioningly at her.
"Serves you right for coming with him," he told her severely. "I thought he'd annoy Ron most," said Hermione dispassion-ately. "I debated for a while about Zacharias Smith, but I thought, on the whole —"
"You considered Smith?" said Harry, revoked.
"Yes, I did, and I'm starting to wish I'd chosen him, McLaggen makes Grawp look a gentleman. Let's go this way, we'll be able to see him coming, he's so tall. . . ." The three of them made their way over to the other side of the room, scooping up goblets of mead on the way, realizing too late that Professor Trelawney was standing there alone.

Edgar Degas Rehearsal on the Stage painting

Edgar Degas Rehearsal on the Stage paintingEdgar Degas Dancers in Pink painting
clothing; many people seemed to have returned from Hogsmeade early because of the bad weather. There was no buzz of fear or speculation, however: Clearly, the news of Katie's fate had not yet spread.
"It wasn't a very slick attack, really, when you stop and think about it," said Ron, casually turfing a first year out of one of the good armchairs by the fire so that he could sit down. "The curse didn't even make it into the castle. Not what you'd call foolproof."
"You're right," said Hermione, prodding Ron out of the chair with her foot and offering it to the first year again. "It wasn't very well thought-out at all."
"But since when has Malfoy been one of the world's great thinkers?" asked Harry.
Neither Ron nor Hermione answered him.