ENVY

I Wish I Wrote That

Wow, you guys are doing great. I'll bet you get all sorts of cool stuff for winning the Mystery Hunt. Fame, and cars, and coins, and… Yeah, break me off a piece of that! Sorry for the delay, but I've been occupied putting together a few more of my favorite works of literature. Now that'd be the life, huh? Being a famous writer, capturing all of life's vagaries in a single sentence. Mmm, "vagaries," that's a good word. I think I'll include that in my next novel. But I need a title. How's The Hellfire of the Vanities sound?

Chapter 1

"Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by the beautiful and coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

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Chapter 2

"'The time has come,' the walrus said, `to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships—of champions—of cabbages and kings.'"

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Chapter 3

"I really should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which I now employ it, and prejudice does it—as papa used to say."

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Chapter 4

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the eye."

"We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England. Our ways are not that hideous, and there shall be to you many strange things."

"When flies fight, there are usually preliminaries to the actual combat-snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged struttings."

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Chapter 5

"A chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War-Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar of grass."

"My husband had this excellence, that he valued in cold expense; and as his history, you may be sure, has very little weight in it."

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Chapter 6

"Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heart of its floor."

"You don't approve of his lordship's compelling his women to be his equals—once a month?"

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Chapter 7

"There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him and have not frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man."

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Chapter 8

"'From the sound of water,' said the writer, `a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.'"

"She that herself will sliver and disbranch from her seven gables, perforce must wither and come to deadly use."

"With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this island about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same."