166
" But it was no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.
Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus: huge towers of modeled vapor, looking as white as Monday's washing d as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth; and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jeweled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry. "
― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)
167
" I incline my agreement with Toirdealbhach,' said Gareth. 'After all, what is the good of killing poor kerns who do not know anything? It would be much better for the people who are angry to fight each other themselves, knight against knight.'
'But you could not have any wars at all, like that,' exclaimed Gaheris.
'It would be absurd,' said Gawaine. 'You must have people, galore of people, in a war.'
'Otherwise you could not kill them,' explained Agravaine. "
― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)
168
" People write tragedies in which fatal blondes betray their paramours to ruin, which Cressidas, Cleopatras, Delilahs, and sometimes even naughty daughters like Jessica bring their lovers or their parents to distress: but these are not the heart of tragedy. They are fripperies to the soul of man. What does it matter if Antony did fall upon his sword? It only killed him. It is the mother's not the lover's lust that rots the mind. It is that which condemns the tragic character to his walking death. It is Jocasta, not Juliet, who dwells in the inner chamber. It is Gertrude, not the silly Ophelia, who sends Hamlet to his madness. The heart of tragedy does not lie in stealing or taking away. Any featherpated girl can steal a heart. It lies in giving, in putting on, in adding, in smothering without pillows. Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself--his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother-character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stifling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of ill-intention. Mordred was the only son of Orkney who never married. He, while his brothers fled to England, was the one who stayed alone with her for twenty years--her living larder. Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire. When he moved, when he blew his nose, he did it with her movement. When he acted he became as unreal as she had been, pretending to be a virgin for the unicorn. He dabbled in the same cruel magic. He had even begun to keep lap dogs like her--although he had always hated hers with the same bitter jealousy as that with which he had hated her lovers. "
― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)
169
" Liberty, Equality and Fraternity….“ began the badger.
"Liberty, Brutality and Obscenity,” rejoined the magician promptly. “You should tray living in some of the revolutions which use that slogan. First they proclaim it: then they announce that the aristos must be liquidated, on high moral grounds, in order to purge the party or to prune the commune or to make the world safe for democracy; and then they rape and murder everybody they can lay their hands on, more in sorrow than in anger, or crucify them, or torture them in ways which i do not care to mention. You should have tried the Spanish Civil War. Yes, that is equality of man. Slaughter anybody who is better than you are, and then we shall be equal soon enough. All equally dead. "
― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)
175
" The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas. "
― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)
178
" The place was, of course, a paradise for a boy to be in. The Wart ran about it like a rabbit in its own complicated labyrinth. He knew everything, everywhere, all the special smells, good climbs, soft lairs, secret hiding-places, jumps, slides, nooks, larders, and blisses. For every season he had the best place, like a cat, and he yelled and ran and fought and upset people and snoozed and daydreamed and pretended he was a Knight, without stopping. Just now he was in the kennel. "
― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)
