Surprise!

The person who once enquired of the younger Byron what he would like best in the world got the answer: "To be an incredibly beautiful prostitute with a sharp sting in my bottom."

by D.J. Taylor from Bright Young People

I thought you said you were satisfied

Just as those receiving blood transfusions run the viral risk of AIDS, so those receiving language transfusions run the viral risk of the contamination of meaning.

by Jean Baudrillard from Fragments

There's another post on language

Reality check

"What a terrifying spectacle is this of human vanity stretched to the verge of dementia. Someone should tell M. Pissarro forcibly that trees are never violet, that the sky is never the color of fresh butter, that nowhere on earth are things to be seen as he paints them." - Art critic in the French periodical Le Figaro critiquing the work of Camille Pissarro and other painters at the impressionist exhibition of 1876

by George Ochoa and Melinda Corey from The timeline book of The Arts

Now that we agree it's priceless...

"He's engaged to a very rich girl," said Billy's mother.
"That's good," said Rosewater. "Money can be a great comfort sometimes."
"It really can."
"Of course it can."
"It isn't much fun if you have to pinch every penny till it screams."
"It's nice to have a little breathing room."

by Kurt Vonnegut from Slaughterhouse 5

Knowing your options

You can go down stairs in a number of ways. On one leg, on two, on all fours, backwards, on your backside, and sliding down the banister.
Each method has its own advantages and drawbacks.

by Zvonimir Balog from Nice manners

No changes please! Ever!

The new entrance to the Paris Louvre had become almost as famous as the museum itself. The controversial, neomodern glass pyramid designed by Chinese-born American architect I.M. Pei still evoked scorn from traditionalists who felt it destroyed the dignity of the Renaissance courtyard. Goethe had described architecture as frozen music, and Pei's critics described pyramid as fingernails on a chalkboard.

by Dan Brown from The Da Vinci Code

The truth about you being my friend

To be a friend to many people, in the way of the perfect friendship, is not possible; just as you cannot be in love with many at once: it is, so to speak, a state of excess which naturally has but one object; and besides, it is not an easy thing for one man to be very much pleased with many people at the same time, not perhaps to find many really good.

by Aristotle from Nicomachean Ethics