Take a lucky dip in this refreshing pool of posts, randomly selected like literary Russian roulette (but more fun and much safer). Or filter by category to take a deeper dive into specific themes.  Enjoy!
If only …
The capable André has a ready set of approaches to unlock any solution needed. If only one could order such a magical bunch of keys.  My husband...
A fine physique
A perfect simile for a man of lean and sinewy build. He was made of bone, muscle, and nerve, like an English race-horse. Source: Ivan Goncharov,...
Of vanishing rain
A simile for evanescent rain, likened to an out of character and fast recalled error, like those social media messages you delete right after...
Letters burned (I)
It always saddens me to learn of letters burned or destroyed; including those we will never see because Jane Austen's sister destroyed them after...
Truth as birthright
In an age awash with fake news and propaganda, Bowen's penetratingly pithy comments stop you in your tracks (or me in mine, at least).  Truths are a...
Big, beneficient rain
We could do with some of this kind of rain, tumbling tears, big-dropped, spillingly abundant but not surgingly so. This doesn't in fact describe...
What is civilization?
Saint-Exupéry has a knack for razor-sharp insights into the nature of big things: peace, war, civilization. Here he seems somewhat ahead of his...
To go or not to go
The Hungarian poet György Faludy weighs up whether to stay in Hungary or to leave at the start of the the Second World War. He chose to leave, and...
As humourless as …
A curious yet convincing simile for lacking humour, by the great metaphorist John Steinbeck. What would come to your mind to complete 'as...
What it takes to be an author
In my naivety, I thought you just had to write and publish a book to be an author, but apparently there's more to it than that, and I'm not sure I...
The purpose of patrons
Doing some research on architectural gems in my newly adopted 'home town', I came across this comment on the Barbarano Palace.  That aside in...
The jewel of learning
An original simile to describe the architecturally solid seat of learning in Dublin, set in and setting off the relative ignorance of the...
Appreciation is a better mode for the understanding of achievement than are all the analytical kinds of accounting for the emergence of exceptional individuals. Appreciation may judge, but always with gratitude, and frequently with awe and wonder. Â
By ‘appreciation’ I mean something more than ‘adequate esteem’. Need also enters into it, in the particular sense of turning to the genius of others in order to redress a lack in oneself, or finding in genius a stimulus to one’s own powers, whatever these may emerge as being.
Source: Harold Bloom, Genius (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), p. 5
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