from Bleak House, chapter XIII, Esther's Narrative (Charles Dickens)

[...] I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's education had not counteracted those influences or directed his character. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt, I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much. 

To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to the same extent - or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever did.

Spring Song, or, The Poet in Difficulties (A.P. Herbert)

I must not say, "The day is fine and hot."
That is complacency: so I will not.

I must not say, "The day is cold and wet."
That is despondency - more deadly yet.

I must not say, "The sky is grey and solemn."
That is defeatist - and perhaps Fifth Column.

And, if from every comment I refrain,
That's dangerous apathy, and wrong again.

I must not say, "There may be storms ahead."
That is a rumour, and must not be spread.

And then, I must not give our enemies
The smallest hint of what the weather is.

Nor should I say what flowers (if any) grow,
For any trifle may assist the foe.

So, with all proper reticence, I sing
That, by the date, I think it must be Spring.

from Busman's Honeymoon, Epithalamion, 3, Talboys: Crown Celestial (Dorothy L. Sayers)

One of the most admirable features of the English criminal law is said to be its dispatch.  You are tried as soon as possible after your arrest, the trial takes three or four days at most, and after your conviction (unless, of course, you appeal), you are executed within three weeks.

Crutchley refused to appeal, preferring to announce that he done it, that he'd do it again, and let them get on with it, it made no odds to him.

Harriet, in consequence, was left to form the opinion that three weeks was quite the worst period of waiting in the world.  A prisoner should be executed the morning after his conviction, as after a court-martial, so that one could get all the misery over in a lump and have done with it.  Or the business should be left to drag on for months and years, as in America, till one was so weary of it as to have exhausted all emotion.

An Infinite Number of Occasional Tables (Les Barker)

I've got an occasional table
There it is over there
You can tell it's an occasional table
Today's its day off, it's a chair

I've got an occasional table
I can't seem to get it to settle
It's all been a bit unexpected
I thought I was buying a kettle

I took it upstairs on the bus
I always get the bus back from town
It was then it turned into a wardrobe
Took six of us to get it back down

I've got an occasional table
But some of the time I've not
I always rush me dinner
You never know how long you've got

I think I might have another
Excuse the element of doubt
It's the kind of occasional table
That's only in when you're out

I thought if I had two they might breed
I really quite fancy a set
But with them both being occasional
I don't think they've actually met

I've got some occasional tables
I'm never quite sure where they are
I'd quite like to have a settee but
So far they've not gone, so far

I think therefore I am
All we believe stems from this
Except my occasional table
Which only occasionally, is

Perhaps there's a parallel universe
Where they all go to live quite a lot
Where they're called usual tables
And only occasionally, not

An infinite number of occasional tables
Well then sure there was always one there
I've got an occasional table
Look, here it is, it's a chair

from Middlemarch, chapter XX (George Eliot)

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.

Cookies (Arnold Lobel)

Toad baked some cookies.
“These cookies smell very good,”
said Toad.
He ate one.
“And they taste even better,” he said. 
Toad ran to Frog’s house. 
“Frog, Frog,” cried Toad, 
 “taste these cookies
that I have made.”

Frog ate one of the cookies.
“These are the best cookies
I have ever eaten!” said Frog.

Frog and Toad ate many cookies,
one after another. 
“You know, Toad,” said Frog,
with his mouth full,
“I think we should stop eating.
We will soon be sick.”

“You are right,” said Toad.
“Let us eat one last cookie,
and then we will stop.”
Frog and Toad ate
one last cookie.
There were many cookies
left in the bowl.
“Frog,” said Toad,
“let us eat one very last cookie,
and then we will stop.”
Frog and Toad
ate one very last cookie. 

“We must stop eating!” cried Toad
as he ate another.
“Yes,” said Frog, 
reaching for a cookie, 
“we need will power.”
“What is will power?” asked Toad.

“Will power is trying hard
not to do something 
that you really want to do,”
said Frog.
“You mean like trying hard not 
to eat all of these cookies?”
asked Toad.
“Right,” said Frog.

Frog put the cookies in a box.
“There,” he said.
“Now we will not eat
any more cookies.”
“But we can open the box,”
said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.

Frog tied some string
around the box.
“There,” he said.
“Now we will not eat
any more cookies.”
“But we can cut the string
and open the box,” said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.

Frog got a ladder.
He put the box up on a high shelf.
“There,” said Frog.
“Now we will not eat
any more cookies.”

“But we can climb the ladder
and take the box
down from the shelf
and cut the string
and open the box,”
said Toad.
“That is true,” said Frog.
Frog climbed the ladder
and took the box
down from the shelf.
He cut the string
and opened the box.

Frog took the box outside.
He shouted in a loud voice.
“HEY BIRDS,
HERE ARE COOKIES!” 
Birds came from everywhere.
They picked up all the cookies 
in their beaks and flew away.
“Now we have no more cookies to eat,”
said Toad sadly.
“Not even one.”

“Yes,” said Frog,
“but we have lots and lots 
of will power.”
“You may keep it all, Frog,”
said Toad. 
“I am going home now 
to bake a cake.”

from The Pursuit of Love (Nancy Mitford)

But Christian's politics did not bore her. As they walked back from his father's house
that evening he had taken her for a tour of the world. He showed her Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, civil war in Spain, inadequate Socialism in France, tyranny in Africa, starvation in Asia,  reaction in America and Right-wing blight in England. Only the U.S.S.R., Norway and Mexico came in for a modicum of praise.

-

Feeling provincial, up in London for the day and determined to see a little life, I made Davey give me luncheon at the Ritz. This had a still further depressing effect on my spirits. My clothes, so nice and suitable for the George, so much admired by the other dons' wives ('My dear, where did you get that lovely tweed?') , were, I now realized, almost bizarre in their dowdiness; it was the floating panels of taffeta all over again. I thought of those dear little black children, three of them now, in their nursery at home, and of dear Alfred in his study, but just for the moment this thought was no consolation. I passionately longed to have a tiny fur hat, or a tiny ostrich hat, like the two ladies at the next table. I longed for a neat black dress, diamond clips and a dark mink coat, shoes like surgical boots, long crinkly black suède gloves, and smooth polished hair. When I tried to explain all this to Davey, he remarked absentmindedly: 

'Oh, but it doesn’t matter a bit for you, Fanny, and, after all, how can you have time for les petits soins de la personne with so many other, more important things to think of.'

I suppose he thought this would cheer me up.

from The Family From One End Street, chapter I, The Christenings (Eve Garnett)

Twin boys came next, and Mr. Ruggles, who had called at the Vicarage to ask for kind assistance in clothing his sons, only one having been expected, spent the Sunday after their arrival in church.  This was partly in order to be out of the way of the fuss at home which the twins' arrival had caused, and partly as a kind of compliment to the Vicar's wife who had been so obliging in the matter of extra baby clothes.  For Mr. Ruggles was not an ardent church goer, and it had crossed his mind on the Vicarage door-step that his last attendance had been the Harvest Festival held several months previously.

Although he knelt, stood, and sat down with the congregation, Mr. Ruggles found it hard to keep his attention on the service, for his mind was busy with many things.  At the present moment the Twins filled most of it, but one corner, his gardening corner, was very much occupied with the progress of his spring vegetables and how it was that Mr. Hook at No. 2 One End Street was so much farther on with his leeks and carrots.  Then there was the problem of whether one or two more hens could be squeezed into the soap-box.  If the family was going to increase at the present rate, thought Mr. Ruggles, the more he could produce in the food line at home the better.  And then, always, of course, there was the Question of the Pig.  Here Jo gave himself up to a few moments happy dreaming ... Surely, in that corner between the hen-box and the little tool-shed, there was room enough for a small sty; he could take in a bit of the flower border and Rosie could have her clothes line a few inches shorter - come to that, he might even pull down the tool-shed altogether and keep his tools in the kitchen, though no doubt Rosie would object.  Anyway, with twins in the house, it was high time the Pig Question was really considered seriously.   There was a fleeting vision of the Sanitary Inspector, but it was of the briefest, and as the congregation sat down for the Second Lesson, hens, vegetables, and twins once more filled Mr. Ruggles' mind.

'Now the names of the twelve apostles are these,' read the Vicar.

Jo pricked up his ears.  Names.  There was another problem.  Rosie had been very quiet about names this time.  He'd said nothing himself, but he was sure she'd something up her sleeve - he believed she'd never quite forgiven him over that Carnation business and Kate.  It looked as if he ought to let her have some say in the matter this time, but, really, he drew the line at fancy and flowery names for boys,  and they would be fancy or flowery if Rosie had a hand in it he was sure.

'Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother,' read the Vicar, 'James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew ...'

'Seem to go in pairs-like,' said Jo to himself.  It seemed encouraging.  'Better pick two of these and get it over,' he thought, but the Vicar was reading on, and the next thing Jo caught was about a workman being worthy of his meat and that, too, he felt, was singularly appropriate and hoped his Sunday dinner would be a good one!  Then, as if an idea had suddenly struck him, he seized a prayer book from the ledge in front of him, and, after wetting his finger and rustling many pages found the place he wanted, he pulled a stub of pencil from his pocket, held it poised over the list of the apostles, shut his eyes and brought it down 'plop!'  James and John.  Jo breathed a sigh of relief - he'd been very afraid of Philip and Bartholomew - especially Bartholomew.  'That decides it,' he muttered, and Mrs. Chips, the grocer's wife, sitting resplendent in sapphire blue velvet in the farthest corner of the pew so that no one by any possible chance should think they were friends (so great is the gulf between grocery and scavenging), turned a stern and reproving eye on him.  But Mr. Ruggles was oblivious; a problem was solved, and his mind made up for him - a labour-saving device he much appreciated.  The Twins' names were settled, and he would slip round to the vestry immediately after the service and arrange for the christening.