Jim > Recent Status Updates

Hemingway gave a lopsided grin and moved into a seat at the next table. He was better looking than his pictures, but his eyes were curiously small, shrewd and reticent like a politician's, and he had a moustache that was plainly designed to counteract the fleshy roundness of his jowls, though it did not. I found him almost as unattractive as his short stories....

Our amours, which were rather outré, were accompanied by an astonishing variety of music, from the happy melodies of Offenbach to the nasal breathy voice of Rudy Vallee and the silver snarling trumpets of Purcell. We all fell asleep soon after midnight, with the stove glowing softly and the slanted moonlight silvering the wall of the garden outside.

I set down the story now because I see in it, if I'm not mistaken, a brief and tragic mirror of the character of those hard-bitten men living on the edge of Buenos Aires before the turn of the century.

He had seen what becomes of the man who is always dining out at sixty. But he might avoid that. "Doan't thou marry for munny, but goa where munny is." And then there was that other outlook, the scene of which was laid somewhere north of Oxford Street, and the glory of which consisted in Lucy's smile, and Lucy's hand, and Lucy's kiss, as he returned home weary from his work.

On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colors.

Reichenau: "In this eastern theater of war, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of war, but also the ruthless standard-bearer of a national ideal and the avenger of all the bestial.ities perpretrated on the German people. For this reason the soldier must fully appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry."

Hitler's fundamental irresponsibiliyu -- a psychologically interesting defiance of fate -- had been to launch the most ambitious invasion in history while refusing to gear the German economy and industry for all-out war. In hindsight, it seems more like the act of a compulsive gambler....

And hereupon he launched into a savage attack upon woman. Woman A disordered child, with all a child's perversity and wickedness, all its instinctive desire to cheat, to lie, to tease, all its cowardice.

The annual contest for the President's Cup never draws the dense crowds which you see at some such event as the British Open.... Entries are accepted only from thosewhose handicap is not lower than eighteen, it having been designed as a special treat for the underprivileged submerged tenth of our golfing world.

Oh, I can't tell you. She [Lizzie Eustace] looks like a beautiful animal that you are afraid to caress for fear it should bite you; -- an animal that would be beautiful if its eyes were not so restless, and its teeth so sharp and so white.

How was I to know that—that was the sort of ball of fire Augustus Mulliner really was? I thought him a wet smack and a total loss, all all the time he was a sportsman who throws eggs at butlers and breaks windows with champagne bottles. I never dreamed there was this deeper side to him.

And suppose a man does succeed, where's the good? What does it bring you? Money? Not as much as your hay-crop. Fame? Yes, a hole-and-corner fame within a space no bigger than your hat. It would be something if it gavc talent, but those who have talent lose it when once they get inside and are chilled by the air of the place.

The Princess was attracted by his youth and fashion, his brightness and his witty irony, from which he carefully took the venom. He knew that women, like children and the mob, and all impulsive and untutored beings, hate a tone of sarcasm, which puts them out, and which they perceive by instinct to be hostile to the dreams of enthusiasm and romance.

Commanders who surrender will be considered intentional deserters, whose families are subject to arrest, while the families of Red Army soldiers who give themselves up as prisoners of war will be denied government benefits and aid....All populated places in the rear of German troops are to be destroyed and burned to the ground.

Lady Fawn was known as a miracle of Virtue, Benevolence, and Persistency. Every good quality that she possessed was so marked as to be worthy of being expressed with a capital. But her virtues were of that extraordinarily high character that there was no weakness in them, -- no getting over them, no perverting them with follies or even exaggerations.

She cried about their youth, about their unfulfilled hopes and unrealized dreams, so honest and beautiful, now lost, executed, and crucified, she cried about Sasha, Lena, pushed out of the life that they believed in and to which they had been so selflessly devoted....In their stead, dull, ruthless careerists and self-seekers had appeared. We'll have to live with our heads bowed.

There were so many unfamiliar faces on the Arbat now. Everything comes to an end. And everyone leaves. Once upon a time his mother used to walk here, and she had been gone a long time. Vika used to walk here, and thank God, she would not be returning to Moscow. The barber Sergei Alexeyevich used to walk here, and he was gone forever. And Sasha Pankratov rotted away in Siberia ....

He was a naked stranger in a huge, foreign, mystical world, and whichever way he turned, unknown and threatening forces were glaring at him.... [T]o all these mighty powers, surrounding him on every side, what resources had he, a feeble, ignorant traveller from a tiny planet on the other side of space, to oppose, to avoid being utterly destroyed?

He pulled the starting lever. The torpedo glided gently from its platform, and passed rather slowly away from the tower, seaward. Its speed increased sensibly, though not excessively, until the approximate limits of the earth's atmosphere were reached. Krag then released the speed valve, and the car sped on its way with a velocity more nearly approaching that of thought than of light.

No mirror of the past could possibly be more vivid than the reflection offered us by Pompeii and Herculaneum; a visit to the two places is an experience that can be paralleled nowhere in the world. In that strange vacuum, its emptiness underlined by innumerable signs of long-arrested activity, life and death seem to be on particularly intimate terms.

Still, do not give up all hope of marrying her. She has strange whims; but nothing will persuade me to believe that she does not love you. She does not want to explain matters yet. Woman's will is God's will.

Destiny from having, in a fit of ill-humour, taken me out hunting, sent me astray in the woods, and made me stumble across a Mauprat, who led me to his den, where I escaped dishonour and perhaps death only by binding my life forever to that of a savage who had none of my principles, and who probably (and who undoubtedly, I should say) never will have them!

Have a care for my pride, then, you know so well what pride is, and do not ever presume upon rights you have acquired. Affection cannot be commanded; it must be implored or inspired. Act so that I may always love you; never tell me that I am forced to love you.

Go to bed very late. Get up very early. We enter New York harbor. A terrific sight despite or because of the mist. The order, the strength, the economic power are there. The heart trembles in front of so much admirable inhumanity.

Kravchenko was instructed to move his corps laterally across several rivers and then link up with the small infantry bridgehead. They got there by the dangerous expedient of sealing up their T-34s as much as possible and charging through the streams at full speed. The corps commander laconically reported that he had managed to get "most" of his vehicles across in this manner....

The superb German fighting machine was defeated by more than distance. The German rapier, designed to end conflict cleanly and efficiently, was dulled by repeated and often clumsy blows from a simple, dull, but very large Soviet bludgeon. That bludgeon took the form of successive waves of newly mobilized armies, each taking its toll of the invaders before shattering and being replaced by the next wave.

Germany's main weaknesses lay in the field of logistics. The vast expanse of the Soviet Union included only 40,000 miles of hard-surfaced all-weather roads and 51,000 miles of railroads. These railroads were of a wider gauge than those found in Germany.

We will arrest you and your group. During the investigation you will admit your guilt because you are guilty. The article under which you will be charged is "creation of a counter-revolutionary organization," which calls for five years up to the death penalty. If you want to live and save your family, think about how to save them. You say that you have no differences with the Party. Prove it.