Cervantes - in context

I say, too, that when a painter desires to become famous in his art he endeavours to copy the originals of the rarest painters that he knows - and the same rule holds good for all the most important crafts and callings that serve to adorn a state. Thus must he who would be esteemed prudent and patient imitate Ulysses...

Biblical mondegreen / David - in context

SAUL: Young man, whose son art thou?
DAVID: The son of Jesse, thy faithful servant, and a Bedlamite.

Shakespeare - in context

To wit, or not to wit, that is the question...

Oscar Wilde - in context (III)

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking for change.

Thomas Crown - in context

From New Cross to Greenwich in one generation, you gotta have the paintings to match.

The Goncourts* - in context

When God the Father with his long white beard, looking the way members of the Institut paint him in church cupolas, after questioning me about what I have done, questions me about everything to which I have lent the complicity of my eyes, he will doubtless ask me: "Creature whom I made human and good, have you by any chance seen the bullfight at the Barrière du Combat, with five great famished bulldogs tearing to pieces some poor, thin old donkey incapable of defending itself?" To which I will reply: "Alas, no, Lord, I have seen something worse than that: I have seen Transporter 3."

--
* from the translation by Robert Baldick

Yeats - in context

I went out to the hazel wood, / Because a fire was in my head, / And I had not had my Health & Safety briefing.

Thoreau - in context

Our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and mankinis.

Isaiah - in context

For all flesh is as grass, and all tin-openers go blunt sooner rather than later and start turning the tins into complicated shapes while digging grooves into the soft parts of your hands.

Samuel Palmer - in context

Wise men make proverbs, but fools retweet them.

James Joyce - in context

I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of socially better-adjusted women.

Stevie Wonder - in context

I just called to say I told you so.

Oscar Wilde - in context (again*)

Swallow, swallow, little swallow - as I said to YOUR MUM last night!

--
* for Dominic Hilton

The Psalms - in context

They that go down to the sea in ships would appear to have got things somewhat arse about face.

McAlindon - in context [GUEST ENTRY]

[via Zachary Smyth]

Oscar Wilde - in context

I believe God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. And vice versa.

Emily Dickinson - in context

There is no Frigate like a Book...
(And that is why they stay afloat.)

Baroness Orczy - in context

They seek him here, they seek him there (this was pre-Google, obviously)...

Hamlet - in context

To die, to sleep;
to sleep, perchance to go on Amazon
a bit...

Alain de Botton - in context

Marriage therapists say: only fools rush in?