1. "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
2. "Stick to it," said Peter; "everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on."
3. Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.
'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'
4. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
5. This was an airy slim boy in shrimp-colored tights that made him look like a forked carrot, the rest of his gear was blue silk and dainty laces and ruffles; and he had long yellow curls, and wore a plumed pink satin cap tilted complacently over his ear. ... He arrived, looked me over with a smiling and impudent curiosity; said he had come for me, and informed me that he was a page.
"Go 'long," I said; "you ain't more than a paragraph."
5 is definitely Mark Twain - Yankee in King Arthur's court I assume
my quote - do you think we should date them as we add them so we can feel smug if it has been there fpr weeks ?
1. "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
2. "Stick to it," said Peter; "everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on."
3. Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.
'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'
4. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
5. There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.."
1. "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
2. "Stick to it," said Peter; "everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on."
3. Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.
'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'
4. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
5. There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.."
Number 4 still there. Slightly apocalyptic cultural criticism, which manages to be a little sniffy and yet is worded in a populist way and with very short sentences. That probably should suggest someone. Beats me, though.
Number 5: "Stick to it" has an English Public school feel. "Keep all on" is interesting. No one would say that now. You'd say "keep on" or "go all out". 1905. It's The Railway Children[/i by E. Nesbit.
1. "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all."
2. They never say a word about the too great populousness of the WEN; nor about that of Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and the like!
3. Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.
'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'
4. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
5. There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.."
Since this one seems to have stalled how about those who posted the five currently up there offering clues until it restarts?
No. 4 is mine. edited to say no 2
The author is an 18th century Radical pamphleteer. He writes "WEN" for London -- I'd thought this peculiar usage would tip someone off, but you have to have read him, of course, and he is a bit obscure. Despite his radicalism, he was more backward-looking than progressivist and idealised the agricultural past. Hence, the contemptuous term for the metropolis. He fought in North America with the British Army as a Sergeant Major, and subsequently stayed there for some years. Rather ghoulishly he disinterred the bones of the writer Thomas Paine, appropriating them as a souvenir, but his son later sold them, and no-one knows where they are now. This writer also took an interest in biology (and there's some pretty dodgy "old wives' tales" about natural history in his major work). He was a proponent of planting the false acacia tree.
But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
Lucy_k_p wrote:Number 4 was mine. As a clue I will say the title is a quotation from Shakespeare.
That starts another thought for me. Namely, I wonder if this is dialogue from a play. There's something curiously loose about it -- for example, the way it moves from "stability" in one sentence to "happiness" in the next, as if they were synonymous. Would anyone try to get away with that in cultural criticism? But the problem is solved if you imagine this as dialogue in a play. It would also explain why the sentences are so short: it may be speech.
Well done Savannah! Please chose a quote you would like to replace it with.
Mike, your earlier description of it was so accurate I thought at first you knew it and were just giving other people a chance. (It's an only slightly representative quote, I wanted to find something with Our Ford or Soma which would have been much more obvious for people, but I don't have a copy in my house so I couldn't find a better one.)
No. 1 is The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
No. 2 is William Cobbett's Rural Rides.
A name is omitted from the new No. 1 and a place from No. 2 which would give them away in a flash.
1. "Consider, [...], that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"
2. These skeletons were the miserable relics of men who had ventured, in search of ancient treasures, into the deadly marshes over the site of the mightiest city of former days. The deserted and utterly extinct city of [...] was under his feet.
3. Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.
'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'
4. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
5. There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.."
Lucy_k_p wrote:
Mike, your earlier description of it was so accurate I thought at first you knew it and were just giving other people a chance. (It's an only slightly representative quote, I wanted to find something with Our Ford or Soma which would have been much more obvious for people, but I don't have a copy in my house so I couldn't find a better one.)
Ah, it makes perfect sense now. It will be dialogue then, only from a novel. And in his dystopia this would work: they have "stability" and "happiness". As a general sort of statement it's kind of dubious from several points of view … I mean, Byzantium produced some of the finest art that's ever been seen, and that was "stable" enough to last for over a thousand years. ( Best exhibition I've ever seen -- absolutely priceless stuff.) But as something someone might say in BNW it works.
It's many years since I read it. I vaguely recall the plot: that's about it. But I read his utopia, Island, more recently -- about ten years ago. That's more boring really.
RuthieG wrote:
2. These skeletons were the miserable relics of men who had ventured, in search of ancient treasures, into the deadly marshes over the site of the mightiest city of former days. The deserted and utterly extinct city of [...] was under his feet.
I know this one: it's the marshes that do it. You've read it for Librivox, haven't you?
1. "Consider, [...], that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"
2. "Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon."
3. Owen slowly folded up the piece of newspaper he had been reading and put it into his pocket.
'All right,' he replied. 'I'll show you how the Great Money Trick is worked.'
4. But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.
5. There is no plot in this story, because there has been none in my life or in any other life which has come under my notice. I am one of a class, the individuals of which have not time for plots in their life, but have all they can do to get their work done without indulging in such a luxury.."
I'll give another clue:
Quote number 3 is from a Solo in the LV catalogue, and I praised it on the thank a reader thread not long ago. It is a work of fiction with a political theme.
And Savannah has not yet come up with an new quote for space 4, does anyone else want to chip in with a new quote?
Personally I keep staring at quote 5 and thinking 'that sounds really familiar,' but I can't work out where I've seen it, or if it's just the author's style I'm recognising. I know I'll be kicking myself when someone gives the answer, but the only guess I can come up with is Dickens, and I don't think it's him.
.
I'm reading it in school this week.