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61 " Is it harder for a coward to fight with his fists than to kill himself? Or again, is it easier for him to die than to endure a prolonged cross-fire of women’s wrath and scorn? "
― Max Beerbohm , Zuleika Dobson
62 " Why should the disseizin of his soul have seemed shameful to him? He had had no soul till it passed out of his keeping. "
63 " Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus of anomalies. "
64 " She did not need now to forget what she had seen; and, not needing to forget it—thus are our brains fashioned—she was able to forget it. "
65 " I am come here for the express purpose of undoing my impiety. "
66 " Thrice all that was fine and sweet in her had leapt forth, only to be scourged back into hiding. Poor heart inhibited! "
67 " Without pretending to be quite sure what a skunk is,” said the Duke, “I take you to be all that it isn’t. And the high esteem in which I hold you is the measure for me of the loss that your death would be to America and to Oxford. "
68 " Death would lose much of its sting for him if there were somewhere in the world just one woman, however lowly, whose heart would be broken by his dying. "
69 " Come in, Noaks,” said the Duke. “You have been to a lecture?” “Aristotle’s Politics,” nodded Noaks. "
70 " And was it not clear now that the absorbing need in her soul, the need to love, would never—except for a brief while, now and then, and by an unfortunate misunderstanding—be fulfilled? "
71 " But don’t worry. America can turn out millions just like me, and Oxford can have as many of them as she can hold. On the other hand, how many of YOU can be turned out, as per sample, in England? "
72 " For the first time in his life, he was resentful of the Duke’s great elegance and average stature, his high lineage and incomputable wealth. Hitherto, these things had been too remote for envy. "
73 " Told? I am a Gallio for such follies. "
74 " So salient was his own passion that he had not had time to wonder whether it were returned. "
75 " All this is very well conceived, no doubt,” said he, “and well executed. But it happens to be otiose. "
76 " The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play. Please answer my question, to the best of your ability. "
77 " Well, I grant you the adage that it is useless to bolt the stable door when the horse has been stolen. But what shall be said of the ostler who doesn’t know—won’t even ‘inquire’ whether—the horse HAS been stolen, grand-papa? "
78 " Love and Death—for him they were exquisitely one. "
79 " Echoes of his boots fell from the upper stairs and met the ascending susurrus of a silk skirt. "
80 " He remembered that even Socrates, for all the popular charm of his mock-modesty and his true geniality, had ceased after a while to be tolerable. Without such a manner to grace his method, Socrates would have had a very brief time indeed. The Duke recoiled from what he took to be another pitfall. He almost smelt hemlock. "