The Play's the Thing

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Torch Press, 1927 - Drama - 104 pages

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Page 29 - Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness; and reverence towards the gods must be inviolate. Great words of prideful men are ever punished with great blows, and, in old age, teach the chastened to be wise.
Page 55 - To hear then prepare of the Discipline rare which flourished in Athens of yore When Honour and Truth were in fashion with youth and Sobriety bloomed on our shore; First of all the old rule was preserved in our school that "boys should be seen and not heard": And then to the home of the Harpist would come decorous in action and word All the lads of one town, though the snow peppered down, in spite of all wind and all weather: And they sang an old song as they paced it along, not shambling with thighs...
Page 34 - The time is out of joint : — 0, cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right ! — Nay, come, let 's go together.
Page 56 - To leave not a trace of themselves in the place for a vigilant lover to view. They never would soil their persons with oil but were inartificial and true. Nor tempered their throat to a soft mincing note and sighs to their lovers addressed : Nor laid themselves out, as they strutted about, to the wanton desires of the rest: Nor would anyone dare such stimulant fare as the head of the radish to wish: Nor to make over bold with the food of the old, the anise, and parsley, and fish: Nor dainties to...
Page 56 - To some manly old air all simple and bare which their fathers had chanted before. And should any one dare the tune to impair and with intricate twistings to fill, Such as Phrynis is fain, and his long-winded train,. perversely to quaver and trill, Many stripes would he feel in return for his zeal, as to genuine Music a foe.
Page 43 - When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness; so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news, and we'll talk with them too, Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things. As if we were God's spies...
Page 65 - On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.
Page 94 - But the poetnaturalist realized later, in this idea of an "unchanging peaceful present" with the stamp of everlastingness upon it, was implicit a contradiction of natural selection. Viewing his work from the perspective of thirty years, Hudson wrote in the preface to the 1906 edition: Alas that in this case the wish cannot induce belief. For now I remember another thing which Nature said — that earthly excellence can come in no way but one, and the ending of passion is the beginning of decay.10...
Page 103 - Nature said — that earthly excellence can come in no way but one, and the ending of passion and strife is the beginning of decay.
Page 64 - And now, dear friends, I wish to chide you both, That ye, all of one blood, all brethren sprinkling The selfsame altars from the selfsame laver, At Pylae, Pytho, and Olympia,6 ay And many others which 'twere long to name, That ye, Hellenes — with barbarian foes Armed, looking on — fight and destroy Hellenes ! So far one reprimand includes you both.

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