... a sentence.

In resolving to do our work well is the only sound foundation of any religion whatsoever: and by that resolution only, and what we have done, and not by our belief, Christ will judge us.

—John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera, Letter 76.

... a spam email.

Forgive my indignation if this message comes to you as a surprise ...

—"Mohamed Mohama," of the "Economic Community of West African States."

How dare he be indignant at my surprise? Should I have been expecting his email?

... a sentence fragment.

Flapdoodle to feed fools on.

—James Joyce, Ulysses, p. 161.

... a couple lines from what's not a novel.

Nancy Barron, a madwoman at the poorhouse farm in Concord.

Immortalized because Emerson could hear her endless screaming from his study.

—David Markson, This Is Not a Novel, p. 66.

... a sentence.

Like some Zen goddess, I observe human frailty and foibles, all that is useless or stupid, with affection.

—Carole Maso, in The Room Lit by Roses, a journal of pregnancy and birth. There are lots of good lines in this book.

... a footnote.

I am indebted for this phrase to the 9,000-odd writers who have used it before me.

—Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, p. 240, footnote. The phrase is "he looks at her as if seeing her for the first time." (And then "the scene mercifully fades before my eyes." Two asterisks leading to the same footnote!)

... a paragraph.

Prudence and William had left an inflated india-rubber sea-serpent behind them in the bathroom. Sir Samson sat in the warm water engrossed with it. He swished it down the water and caught it in his toes; he made waves for it; he blew it along; he sat on it and let it shoot up suddenly to the surface between his thighs; he squeezed some air out of it and made bubbles. Chance treats of this kind made or marred the happiness of his day. Soon he was rapt in daydream about the pleistocene age, where among mists and vast unpeopled crags schools of deep-sea monsters splashed and sported ...

—Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief, p. 62 of 238.

... a line from a play.

I could have breakfasted out of her knickers so sweetly pure she was ...

—Steven Berkoff, from a play called East.

... a metaphor.

The air in our lungs is "the forked root" of the sky.

—The Erl King by Michel Tournier, p. 65.

... a joke.

A man goes into an Italian cobbler's shop with a pair of shoes to be heeled. He makes it clear that he must have the shoes that same evening, and that if the cobbler can't do the job, he won't leave the shoes. The cobbler swears that the shoes will be ready.

That evening, the man returns to find that the shoes are not ready, and, exasperated, he asks the cobbler why he swore to him that they would be.

The cobbler replies: "Telling you that they'd be ready, even when I knew they wouldn't, made you happy all day."

—"Genetic Coding," by Gilbert Sorrentino, from Something Said.

... a long sentence.

In God's eyes the differences of social position, of intellect, of culture, of cleanliness, of dress, which different men exhibit, and all the other rarities and exceptions on which they so fantastically pin their pride, must be so small as practically quite to vanish; and all that should remain is the common fact that here we are, a countless multitude of vessels of life, each of us pent in to peculiar difficulties, with which we must severally struggle by using whatever of fortitude and goodness we can summon up.

—"What Makes a Life Significant?", by William James.

... a sentence.

You remember how father would trust strangers, and if they fooled him he would say, "It's better to be fooled than to be suspicious"—that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil.

—Howards End, E. M. Forster, p. 41 (of 319).

... a newspaper article.

Efforts to remove "squaw" [from maps and official place names] can draw bewildered reactions from white people, who say they had no idea that Indians objected to it. Some Native Americans do not take offense at the word, but many do, and some consider it so ugly that they call it "the s-word."

English speakers have used the term for almost 400 years, starting in what is now the Northeastern United States. Linguists say it probably derives from terms for woman in Algonquin languages, but Indians often contend that it comes from a word for vagina. (Sometimes, the vulgarity is beyond debate; there are summits called Squaw Teat or derivations of that.)

—New York Times National Edition, March 29th, p. 14.

I also don't find the word offensive (I don't find anything offensive), but I think we have to take other people's word for it when they say they do find something offensive.

What I found amusing was the claim that a word, if derived from "vagina," is therefore vulgar. If the word "lady" were proved to derive from "vagina," would we therefore find it offensive to call a lady "lady"? Are vaginas offensive?

Also, I think it's funny that a mountain—Squaw Teat—might have been named, in effect, "Pussy Boob," or "Vagina Tit."

... part of a poem.

A single tree with sinuous trunk, boughs exquisitely wreathed, grew there; an ash which Winter for himself decked out with pride, and with outlandish grace: up from the ground, and almost to the top, the trunk and every master branch were green with clustering ivy, and the lightsome twigs and outer spray profusely tipped with seeds that hung in yellow tassels, while the air stirred them, not voiceless.

Often have I stood foot-bound uplooking at this lovely tree beneath a frosty moon.

The hemisphere of magic fiction, verse of mine perchance may never tread; but scarcely Spenser's self could have more tranquil visions in his youth, or could more bright appearances create of human forms with superhuman powers, than I beheld, loitering on calm clear nights alone, beneath this fairy work of earth.

—from Book Six of The Prelude by William Wordsworth. I love that word, "foot-bound."

... a phrase.

... that vapor-bath of hurried and discontented humanity ...

—describing a subway car, in News From Nowhere, by William Morris, p. 1.

... a footnote.

For the record, I’d like to live in an America in which I could leave my door unlocked all the time; in which I could walk wherever I wanted at night; in which we all took each other on faith; in which there were fewer people and more trees, a wild America like Canada; an America in which I could believe what the President said; in which women’s bodies were their own business; in which electrical power consumption diminished every year, in which automobiles were banned from our cities and televisions and chain stores were banned everywhere; in which knowingly failing to help a stranger in an emergency would be punished by death, in which people collected experiences instead of things; in which everyone died at home, not in a hospital, in which everything was sexual and nothing was pornographic, in which beautiful words were second in importance only to beautiful deeds and beautiful souls, in which we all made use of what we already had.

—Rising Up and Rising Down by William T. Vollmann, vol. 1, p. 311, note 99.

... a paragraph.

We will try to take some small piece of English ground, beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick; none idle but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it; but instant obedience to known law, and appointed persons: no equality upon it; but recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour in the risk of our lives; when we want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, or boats; we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in our fields,—and few bricks. We will have some music and poetry; the children shall learn to dance to it and sing it;—perhaps some of the old people, in time, may also.

—Fors Clavigera by John Ruskin, Letter 5.