There's a lot of negativity around these days. For a change, here are a hundred Yesses to identify. Admittedly, one or two might be ironic, equivocal, bitter, despairing, uneasy, evasive, sarcastic, resigned, contemptuous, mocking, procrastinatory or downright dishonest. But most are sincere. A good proportion, anyway.
Some non-fiction. Some screenplays (TV and film). Works in translation are marked [*] (with a couple of borderline cases treated as legitimate English-language works in their own right). Hints on request.
The authors (none repeated):
Douglas Adams, Dante Alighieri, John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Saint Augustine
Honoré de Balzac, Samuel Beckett, John Berryman, James Boswell, Richard Brautigan, Flann O'Brien, Patrick O'Brien, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning
Albert Camus, Thomas Carlyle, John le Carré, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, James Clavell, James Clear, John Cleese & Graham Chapman, Eddie Condon, Flannery O'Connor, Joseph Conrad, William Cooper, Hart Crane, Richmal Crompton, e. e. cummings
Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Isak Dinesen, Roddy Doyle, Lord Dunsany
George Eliot, Brett Easton Ellis
William Faulkner, Edward Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, John Fowles
William Golding, Richard Gordon, Robert Graves, William Lindsay Gresham
Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Ernest Hemingway, G. M. Hopkins, Ted Hughes
Henry James, William James, Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn, James Joyce
Ken Kesey, Stephen King
Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Elmore Leonard, C. S. Lewis
Thomas Mann, Cormac McCarthy, Louis Mellis & David Scinto, Margaret Mitchell, Iris Murdoch
Vladimir Nabokov, Nael (age 6), Friedrich Nietzsche
Octavio Paz, Fernando Pessoa, Plato, Terry Pratchett
Christina Rossetti, Damon Runyon
J. D. Salinger, John Scarne, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Smart, Gary Snyder, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Robert Louis Stevenson
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, James Thurber, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain
Jules Verne, Kurt Vonnegut
Evelyn Waugh, H. G. Wells, Irvine Welsh, Walt Whitman, P. G. Wodehouse, Thomas Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, Alexander Woollcott
1)
Scotland kicked off.
— Denis Law taps to Eddie Gray —
I got a foot in; the ball hit the gate.
— Yessss!
— My word, said the commentator. A goal by Best. One-nil to Northern Ireland.
2)
‘I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in public, emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any new suspicion may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in this extraordinary matter?’
‘Not at all,’ returned the Dean. ‘And yet, do you know, I don’t think,’ with a very nice and neat emphasis on those two words: ‘I *don’t think* I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But emphatically? No-o-o. I think not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping our hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing emphatically.’
3)
It’s got to ask uss a quesstion, my preciouss, yes, yess, yesss.
4)
At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr. James Macpherson, as translations of Ossian, was at its height. Johnson had all along denied their authenticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained that they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr. Fordyce, Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, ‘Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.’
5)
The babe, the babe, the old woman crooned.
They ain't nary’n.
Hah, said the old woman. Bagged for the river trade I’d judge. Yon sow there might make ye a travelin mate that’s downed her hoggets save one.
She sat very straight in the chair. Cradled among stovewood against the wall was a sleeping hog she had not seen. The old woman turned, a small bent androgyne gesturing with a black spoon, waiting.
That’s a lie what you said, the girl whispered hoarsely. I never. He was took from me. A chap. I’m a-huntin him.
Your hand to God, the old woman said.
She raised her hand slightly from the table. Yes, she said.
6)
Now, what constitutes a cheater at cards? I myself am sometimes, after all these years and meditations, perplexed about a player: shall he go into my book as a scoundrel or as just a thoroughgoing no-holds barred good player? I used to play Gin Rummy with an elderly lady, a business acquaintance of mine, who might be characterized as straddling this borderline. She has a habit, after the cards have been cut for her deal, of peeking at the bottom card in squaring the pack. Harmless? Yes. She's looking at a card that will never get into the play of the hand. Harmless? Ye-e-es. But her very knowledge that this card is dead gives her a measurable percentage of advantage over me in planning the play. She has seized relevant evidence that is not available to me.
*She is a cheat.*
7)
— Tell me...
— Yessir?
— Have you in fact got any cheese here at all?
— Yes, sir.
— Really?
— No. Not really, sir.
8)
The seven-million dollar actor in the jacket a bum wouldn't wear told the headwaiter he felt like an omelet, hesitant about it, almost apologetic. Could he have a cheese omelet with shallots, but with the shallots only slightly browned? The headwaiter said yes, of course. Then could he have some kind of light tomato sauce over it with just a hint of garlic but, please, no oregano? Of course.
9)
‘Look, Jonas,’ Margie says, ‘are you going to stand here and hear me insulted? If you are, I am leaving right now,’ she says. Then she starts for the door, and Jonas runs after her and grabs her by the arm and says:
‘But, Margie,’ he says, ‘what can I do?’
‘Well,’ Margie says, ‘you can boff this big ape for one thing, as any gentleman is bound to do, unless,’ she says, ‘there is even more umbrella in you than ever I suspect.’
‘Why, yes,’ Jonas says. ‘To be sure, and certainly,’ he says.
10)
Au fond, ca m'est bien egal. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were like sand, and —
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies."
"Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"
11)
He bellowed from our bridge: “O Malebranche!
Here’s one of Santa Zita’s Elders: press
Him under, while I go for more; and thank
That city, which supplies them to excess.
Except Bonturo, all are barrators there:
For cash they’ll alter any ‘No’ to ‘Yes’!”
[*]
12)
“12. Say ‘Yes’ to every reasonable request made of you in the course of one day.”
All right, start making some. I can’t think of a single one offhand. The word ‘reasonable’ has taken a terrible tossing around in my life — both personal and business. If you mean watering the geraniums, I’ll do that. If you mean walking around Central Park with you for the fresh air and exercise, you are crazy.
13)
. . . . Is he married?
I cannot hate thee worser than I do
If thou again say ‘Yes.’
14)
Once upon a time (I said, and he stared bitterly bitterly at the floor) there was a very ugly monster who captured a princess and put her in a dungeon in his castle. Every evening he made her sit with him and ordered her to say to him, "You are very handsome, my lord," And every evening she said, "You are very ugly, you monster." And then the monster looked very hurt and sad and stared at the floor. So one evening the princess said, "If you do this thing and that thing you might be handsome," but the monster said, "I can't, I can't." The princess said, "Try, try." But the monster said, "I can't, I can't." Every evening it was the same. He asked her to lie, and she wouldn't. So the princess began to think that he really enjoyed being a monster and very ugly. Then one day she saw he was crying when she'd told him, for the fiftieth time, that he was ugly. So she said, "You can become very handsome if you do just one thing. Will you do it?" Yes, he said, at last, he would try to do it. So she said, then set me free. And he set her free. And suddenly, he wasn't ugly any more, he was a prince who had been bewitched. And he followed the princess out of the castle. And they both lived happily ever afterwards.
15)
. . . and stars will stick
like tacks in the night
yes oh yes yes yes two
little snails at the back
of the knee building bon-
fires something like eye-
lashes something two zippos
striking yes yes yes small and me maker.
16)
“Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a good brother to you?”
“Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.
“Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?”
“Ye-ye-es — and I — lo-lo-love you so, Tom.”
“But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I’d set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing.”
“But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; “I couldn’t help it.”
17)
“Float?” The clown’s grin widened. “Oh yes, indeed they do.”
18)
She put down the decanter and said ‘We shall have to share the glass; it is the only clean one left. Do you dislike drinking with me?’
‘I do not,’ he said, and they sat there without speaking for some minutes, nibbling cakes and silently passing the wine-glass to and fro: a friendly, companionable pause in spite of the tensions on either side. ‘Listen,’ he said at last, ‘was it as a medical man that you wished to consult me?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is to say no.’
19)
I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer!
[*]
20)
She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth sand young and lovely with the warm, scalding coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, “And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone.”
21)
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man.
22)
Here lands female and male,
Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of materials,
Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow’d,
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,
The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,
Yes here comes my mistress the soul.
23)
Better to write than to dare live, even if living means merely to buy bananas in the sunlight, as long as the sun lasts and there are bananas for sale.
Later, perhaps... Yes, later...
[*]
24)
‘What’s up?’ I asked sleepily.
‘You know that girl up in the ward — Molly. Remember, the one I’ve been popping up to see?’
‘Ummm.’
‘Well — listen, old man, don’t go to sleep for God’s sake! To-night I nipped up to see her as usual, and I was brimming over a bit with the old joys of spring and so forth owing to being full of beer...’
‘Disgusting.’
‘... and Christ Almighty, before I knew where I was I'd proposed to the bloody woman!’
I tried to clear sleep and alcohol out of my eyes, like soapsuds.
‘Did she accept?’ I asked, yawning.
‘Accept! She said “Yes, please,” as far as I remember. Don’t you realize what’s happened? Can’t you see the gravity of the situation?’
25)
Therefore since today, a day that is really quite cool despite the deceptive appearance of the sunlight on things, is to really be the point when everything changes for better or for worse, it might be good to examine it, see how far it goes, since the far reaches of sleep are to be delayed indefinitely. It is not even a question of them any more. What matters is how you are going to figure your way out of this new problem which has again come home to roost. Will the answer be another delay, prolonged beyond the end of time, and disguised once again as an active life intelligently pursued? Or is it to be a definite break with the past — either the no of death shutting you up in a small cell-like space or a yes whose vibrations you cannot even begin to qualify or imagine?
26)
“The twilight is further away,” said Alveric.
“Yes, yes,” said the old man without any meaning in his voice, whatever he had in his mind.
“When did it go?” said Alveric.
“The twilight, master?” said his host.
“Yes,” said Alveric.
“Ah, the twilight,” the old man said.
27)
They addressed themselves to the glass with the extreme of courtesy. Would Holger not make up some poetry for them? He had said he was a poet, before he went to hover in the hastening while. Ah, how they all yearned to hear him versify! They would love it so!
And lo, the good glass yielded and said yes! Truly there was something placable and good-humoured about the way it tapped. And then Holger the spirit began to poetize, and kept it up, copiously, circumstantially, without pausing for thought, for dear knows how long. It seemed impossible to stop him . . .
[*]
28)
“Hello?” I interrupt. “Shut up. Does everyone have my undivided attention?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Van Patten sighs, bored.
“I am calling Cindy up to get Evelyn out of coming to dinner with us,” I announce.
“Why in the hell did you invite Evelyn in the first place?” one of them asks.
29)
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
30)
“Don't tell me that honor is merely a chemical reaction or that a man who deliberately gives his life for another is merely following a behavior pattern. Is God happy with the poisoned cat dying alone in convulsions behind the billboard? Is God happy that life is cruel and that only the fittest survive? The fittest for what? Oh no, far from it. If God were omnipotent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn’t have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium. Is it blasphemy to suggest that God has his bad days when nothing goes right, and that God’s days are very, very long?”
“You’re a wise man, Mr. Clarendon. You said something about reversing the pattern.”
He smiled faintly. “You thought I had lost the place in the overlong book of my words. No sir, I had not. A woman like Mrs. West almost always ends up marrying a series of pseudo-elegant fortune hunters, tango dancers with handsome sideburns, skiing instructors with beautiful blond muscles, faded French and Italian aristocrats, shoddy princelings from the Middle East, each worse than the one before. She might even in her extremity marry a man like Mitchell. If she married me, she would marry an old bore, but at least she would marry a gentleman.”
“Yeah.”
He chuckled. “The monosyllable indicates a surfeit of Henry Clarendon IV. I don't blame you.”
31)
“We shall need this flat,” said Magdalen, “and I want you out of it now.”
I thought her answer was evasive. “Did you say you were getting married?” I asked. I began to have the feeling of responsibility again. After all, she had no father, and I felt in loco parentis. It was about the only locus I had left. And it seemed to me, now that I came to think of it, somehow fantastically unlikely that Starfield would marry a girl like Magdalen. Madge would do to hang fur coats on as well as any other female clothes-horse. But she wasn’t flashy, any more than she was rich or famous. She was a nice healthy English girl, as simple and sweet as May Day at Kew. But I imagined Starfield’s tastes as being more exotic and far from matrimonial. “Yes,” said Madge with emphasis, still as fresh as cream. “And now will you start packing?” She had a bad conscience, though, I could see from the way she avoided my eye.
32)
‘I told him that modern enlightened thought held that imprisonment merely brutalizes the criminal.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘“Oh, yes?”’
‘Ah, he agreed with you.’
‘He did nothing of the kind. He spoke in a most unpleasant, sneering voice. “It does, does it?” he said. And I said “Yes, it does.” He then said something about modern enlightened thought which I cannot repeat.’
33)
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God . . .
34)
We sat there and drank and talked about books. Art had owned a lot of books in Los Angeles, but they were all gone now. He told us that he used to spend his spare time in secondhand bookstores buying old and unusual books when he was in show business, traveling from city to city across America. Some of them were very rare autographed books, he told us, but he had bought them for very little and was forced to sell them for very little.
"They'd be worth a lot of money now," he said.
The Black woman sat there very quietly studying her brandy. A couple of times she said yes, in a sort of nice way. She used the word yes to its best advantage, when surrounded by no meaning and left alone from other words.
35)
This came to less yes than an ice cream cone
Let stand . . . though still my sense of it is brisk:
Blond silky cream, sweet cold, aches: a door shut.
Errors of order! Luck lies with the bone,
Who rushed (and rests) to meet your small mouth, risk
Your teeth irregular and passionate.
36)
“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, mama, but you can — and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.”
“My darling Blanche! recollect — ”
“I do — I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will — quick, Sam!”
“Yes — yes — yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let her come — it will be excellent sport!”
37)
. . . I have seen
Your photo, I think, in the papers, nursing
A baby or mourning a corpse: each time
You had nothing to say and did not, one could see,
Observe where you were, Muse of the unique
Historical fact, defending with silence
Some world of your beholding, a silence
No explosion can conquer but a lover's Yes
Has been known to fill.
38)
One of the (china) dolls hands us a piece ay paper wi Brecht: The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Nottingham University Theatre Group on it. Doubtless a collection of zit–encrusted, squeakyvoiced wankers playing oot a miserable pretension tae the arts before graduating to work in the power stations which give the local children leukemia or investment consultancies which shut doon factories, throwing people into poverty and despair. Still, let's git the board–treading ootay the system first. Fricking toss bags, don't you agree, Sean, ma auld fellow former milkdelivering mucker?
Yesh Shimon, I shink you may have a shtrong point thair.
39)
“We are all damned,” she said, “but some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see. It’s a kind of salvation.”
The boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair. “Okay,” he almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”
“Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense.”
40)
What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman? — a woman who knows how to hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: “You are very inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you are jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?” — in short, a woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying No, and incommensurable variations of the word Yes. Is not a treatise on the words yes and no, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic, and moral work, still waiting to be written?
I'm sayin' thanks an' all that... thanks for thinkin' of me... but I'm just gonna 'ave to turn this opportunity down...
No, you're just gonna 'ave to turn this opportunity YES!
42)
“What happens to us?” Stan’s mouth had gone dry.
“Nothing, kid, if everybody keeps his head. Never argue with a cop. That’s what you pay a mouthpiece for. Treat ’em polite and yes ’em to death and send for a mouthpiece. Hell, Stan, you got a lot to learn yet about the carny.”
43)
Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum; as Hope too often is? Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to see, to sail towards, — which hovers over Niagara Falls? In that case, victorious Analysis will have enough to do.
Alas, yes! a whole world to remake, if she could see it; work for another than she! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the inward spiritual, and the outward economical; head or heart, there is no soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are more or less of kin, and do usually go together: especially it is an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil is, there, as the parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a proportionate extent been.
44)
. . . But you have eyes now
Only for the tattered bundle of throwaway lamb.
‘Did it cry?’ you keep asking, in a three-year-old field-wide
Piercing persistence. ‘Oh yes’ I say ‘it cried.’
45)
These brothers and sisters have different natures, and some of them God framed to rule, whom he fashioned of gold; others he made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again to be husbandmen and craftsmen, and these were formed by him of brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from a common stock, a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son, and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social scale; for an oracle says ‘that the State will come to an end if governed by a man of brass or iron.’
Will our citizens ever believe all this?
Not in the present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.
46)
‘Do you believe in God, Emmanuelson?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Emmanuelson. He sat in silence for a time. ‘Perhaps you will think me a terrible sceptic,’ he said, ‘if I now say what I am going to say. But with the exception of God I believe in absolutely nothing whatever.’
47)
What if they hear me!
Who shall say
That such an importunity
May not at last avail?
That, weary of this Beggar's face —
They may not finally say, Yes —
To drive her from the Hall?
48)
“ . . . So Percy sends for me, all lofty,” — the brogue again: “‘You're to leave Polyakov alone. You’re to put him out of your silly woman’s mind, do you understand? You and your blasted Polly what’s-’is-name are becoming a damned nuisance, so lay off him.’ Follows it up with a rude letter. ‘We spoke and you agreed,’ copy to head cow. I wrote, ‘yes repeat no’ on the bottom and sent it back to him.”
49)
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
[*]
50)
'Mister — ' he found difficulty with his b's, m's and p's and produced them by bringing his upper lip down over his teeth like a horse does when it takes sugar out of your hand — 'long time now my friends and I been back in legal. What I mean, the old days of leaving corpses strewn all over the landscape went out with the 'forties. Me and my associates, we do all right with the girls, the hemp, and the racetrack, and when we're short there's our good friends the Unions to slip us the odd fin. Ya see, mister — ' The Grinner opened his hands and then put them back into the cradle — 'we figger the old days are gone. Big Jim Colossimo, Johnny Torrio, Dion O'Bannion, Al Capone — where are those guys today, huh? Mister, they're pushing up the morning glory by the fence. Mebbe you weren't around in the days when we used to hide up between fights in Little Bohemia up behind Milwaukee? Well, siree, in those days, people were shooting at each other so fast you'd often need a programme to tell the act from the spectators. So all right, people got tired of it — those that hadn't already got tired to death, if you get my meaning — and when the 'fifties come along and I take over the team, it's unanimous that we get out of the fireworks business. And now what, mister? Now you come along and put it to me that me and my friends assist you to let off the biggest fizzbang in history! So what do I figger to say to your proposition, Mister — er — Whoosis? Well, I tell you, mister. Everybody's got his price, see? — and for a billion dollars it's a deal. We'll put away the marbles and bring out the sling-shots. We're in.'
'Grinner, you sure take one hell of a long time to say yes,' commented Mr Midnight sourly.
51)
That reminds me of the old joke about the female soul. Question, Have women a soul? Answer, Yes. Question, Why? Answer, In order that they may be damned. Very witty.
52)
Rosy is the West,
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
And a rose her mouth.
When the happy Yes
Falters from her lips,
Pass and blush the news
O'er the blowing ships.
Over blowing seas,
Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news,
Blush it thro' the West;
Till the red man dance
By his red cedar tree,
And the red man's babe
Leap, beyond the sea.
53)
Then he stood up in the boat and addressed me a long while, speaking fast and with many wavings of his hand. I told him I had no Gaelic; and at this he became very angry, and I began to suspect he thought he was talking English. Listening very close, I caught the word “whateffer” several times; but all the rest was Gaelic and might have been Greek and Hebrew for me.
“Whatever,” said I, to show him I had caught a word.
“Yes, yes — yes, yes,” says he, and then he looked at the other men, as much as to say, “I told you I spoke English,” and began again as hard as ever in the Gaelic.
54)
“What is the matter?” asked Mr. Fogg.
“My master!” gasped Passepartout — “marriage — impossible —”
“Impossible?”
“Impossible — for to-morrow.”
“Why so?”
“Because to-morrow — is Sunday!”
“Monday,” replied Mr. Fogg.
“No — to-day is Saturday.”
“Saturday? Impossible!”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” cried Passepartout.
[*]
55)
My part in the dethronement, the necessary abrogation, would have to be both passive and active at the same time: passive in the sense that I knew better than to wage open physical battle against my work-hardened brother — WATCH OUT warned my monitor inside, my ever-alert distress signal that shouted FIRE at the first smell of a cigarette — and active because I needed the catharsis of being part of his overthrow. I needed to wield the torch, hold the knife. I needed the stain of his actual blood on my conscience as a poultice to draw out the pus of long cowardice. I needed the nourishment of victory to give me the strength I had been cheated of by years of starvation. I needed to fell the tree that had been hogging my sunshine before I even germinated. My sunshine, my need howled. Sun to grow on! to grow out of the shadow into myself! into me! Yes.
56)
‘Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you,’ Sybil said.
‘Sharon Lipschutz said that?’
Sybil nodded vigorously.
He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know how these things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat next to me. I couldn’t push her off, could I?’
‘Yes.’
57)
Was it because they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good — was it for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his effect? Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a fuller force — to confound his critic, slight though as yet the criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The most the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the sound of their name. “Yes. That is no!” had been Chad’s reply; but he had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the world, so that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on with them he wouldn’t in the least find one.
58)
I kept going. The woman beside me was like a coiled spring lying there. I could feel the tension under her skin. I began to sweat.
Suddenly, she uttered a queer little groan.
More ghastly thoughts rushed through my mind. Could she be ill? Was she having a heart attack? Ought I to get the hell out quick?
She groaned again, louder this time. Then all at once, she cried out, “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!’ and like a bomb whose slow fuse had finally reached the dynamite, she exploded into life.
59)
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
60)
“The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away — Blessed be the name of the Lord! But it’s so hard — Oh, it’s so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling. Little did I know then, how soon — Oh, if it was to do over again I’d hug him and bless him for it.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom’s head with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he’s out of all his troubles now. And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach — ”
But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely down.
61)
Robert was, of course, aware that it is difficult, if not impossible, to play an impressive game of tennis and at the same time force an unwilling younger brother to search for missing balls. Reluctantly he abandoned the high-handed manner.
“Now look here,” he said, in a man-to-man tone of voice. “You wouldn’t like to sit by and watch us looking for our own tennis balls, would you?”
“Yes, I would,” said William, unmoved by the pathos of this picture.
Robert added a touch of indignation to his man-to-man manner.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t like it to be said in the village that you’d simply sat by and let us fetch our own balls.”
“Yes, I would,” said William again. “Anyway, I wouldn’t be sittin’ by. I’d be out playin’ with Ginger.”
62)
Fugitive firs and larches for a moment
Caught, past midnight, in our headlight beam
On that mad journey through unlasting lands
I cannot put a name to, years ago,
(And my companions drowsy-drunk) — those trees
Resume again their sharp appearance, perfect
Of spur and tassel, claiming memory,
Claiming affection, ‘Will we be included
In the catalogue? Yes, yes?’ they plead.
63)
She whispered “Yes” before she even thought. It was almost as if he had willed the word and she had spoken it without her own volition.
64)
“Oh you so stupid Jeff boy, of course I always love you. Always and always Jeff and I always just so good to you. Oh you so stupid Jeff and don’t know when you got it good with me. Oh dear, Jeff I certainly am so tired Jeff to-night, don’t you go be a bother to me. Yes I love you Jeff, how often you want me to tell you. Oh you so stupid Jeff, but yes I love you. Now I won’t say it no more now tonight Jeff, you hear me. You just be good Jeff now to me or else I certainly get awful angry with you. Yes I love you, sure, Jeff, though you don’t any way deserve it from me. Yes, yes I love you. Yes Jeff I say it till I certainly am very sleepy. Yes I love you now Jeff, and you certainly must stop asking me to tell you. Oh you great silly boy Jeff Campbell, sure I love you, oh you silly stupid, my own boy Jeff Campbell. Yes I love you and I certainly never won’t say it one more time to-night Jeff, now you hear me.”
65)
— Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.
66)
Alarcén’s contemporaries were right in accusing him of being an interloper, although they were referring more to his physical characteristics than to the singularity of his work. In effect, the most typical portions of his plays deny the values expressed by his Spanish contemporaries. And his negation contains in brief what Mexico has always opposed to Spain. His plays were an answer to Spanish vitality, which was affirmative and splendid in that epoch, expressing itself in a great Yes! to history and the passions. Lope de Vega exalted love, heroism, the superhuman, the incredible; Alarcén favored other virtues, more subtle and bourgeois: dignity, courtesy, a melancholy stoicism, a smiling modesty.
[*]
67)
“Were you happy?” — “Yes.” — “And are you still as happy?” — “Yes. And you?”
— “Then, more kisses!” — “Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?”
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
68)
He said: ‘Suppose, then, a jury were directed to imagine a typical young person — tempted to sexual activity, and asking desperately “How do I stand?” and “Where do I go from here?” — searching for an answer to his problem in your book.’ He paused. ‘What answer do you think he’d find in your book?’
I did not say anything. He was making me feel shy again.
‘The answer he’d find would be Yes, a thousand times Yes, wouldn’t it?’
I said: ‘I think a thousand’s a bit much.’
69)
Yes, I being
the terrible puppet of my dreams, shall
lavish this on you —
70)
She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him with strange golden-lighted eyes, very tender, but with a curious devilish look lurking underneath.
“Say you love me, say ‘my love’ to me,” she pleaded.
He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered with sardonic comprehension.
“I love you right enough,” he said, grimly. “But I want it to be something else.”
“But why? But why?” she insisted, bending her wonderful luminous face to him. “Why isn’t it enough?”
“Because we can go one better,” he said, putting his arms round her.
“No, we can’t,” she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of yielding. “We can only love each other. Say ‘my love’ to me, say it, say it.”
She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and kissed her subtly, murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and irony, and submission:
“Yes, — my love, yes, — my love. Let love be enough then. I love you then — I love you. I’m bored by the rest.”
“Yes,” she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him.
71)
— Now see whether these two sentences are complete propositions: “‘If’ pleases”; “‘Because’ displeases.”
— Yes, they certainly are.
— Very well, now tell me which are the verbs here, and which the nouns.
— I see the verbs are ‘pleases’ and ‘displeases’. But the nouns — what else are they than ‘if’ and ‘because’?
— Therefore, it has been proved to satisfaction that these two conjunctions are also nouns.
— Yes, indeed.
— Can you by yourself bring this out with regard to the other parts of speech, according to the same norm?
— Yes.
[*]
72)
Yes, you said, Take care of this girl for she is what makes my blood circulate and all the stars revolve and the seasons return.
73)
“ . . . Well, we got to run the country, George. It’s ours. Make it a Scientific Organised Business Enterprise. Put idees into it. ’Lectrify it. Run the Press. Run all sorts of developments. All sorts of developments. I been talking to Lord Boom. I been talking to all sorts of people. Great things. Progress. The world on business lines. Only jes’ beginning.” . . .
He fell into a deep meditation.
He Zzzzed for a time and ceased.
“Yes,” he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last emerged with ultimate solutions to the profoundest problems.
74)
Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't have a nice day after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
75)
“I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.”
“I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the money, to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is closed.”
“Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer will you say — ”
71 is either a Socratic Dialogue or a parody. Assuming it's authentic, then it's (presumably) by Plato, but I don't know which one it is. I don't think it's from any of the 4 dialogues that comprise the whole trial+death of Socrates thing, though
>71 is either a Socratic Dialogue or a parody.
Nope, neither Plato nor a parody. It's one of the harder ones for sure.
(Hint: It's about 600 years after Plato.)
76)
She did not finish her dessert. She let her coffee get cold. For a while, neither of them spoke. A stranger, noticing them in the restaurant, might have thought that they were a pair of old friends who had met to discuss a misfortune. His face was gray. Her hands were trembling. Leaning toward her, he said, finally, "The reason I asked you to come here is because the firm I work for has an apartment upstairs."
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
77)
On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes.
78)
‘You were his friend,’ she went on. ‘His friend,’ she repeated, a little louder. ‘You must have been, if he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you — and oh! I must speak. I want you — you who have heard his last words — to know I have been worthy of him... It is not pride... Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better than any one on earth — he told me so himself . . . ’
79)
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
80)
His broad mouth, even when stammering irritably or when nervousness clouded his face, was always wienered for laughter — unearthly, exultant, idiot laughter. There was in him demonic exuberance, a wild intelligence that did not come from the brain . . .
Thus, listening to an old lady of the church, who with all her power of persuasion and earnestness was unfolding the dogmas of Presbyterianism to him, he would lean forward in an attitude of exaggerated respectfulness and attention, one broad hand clinched about his knee, while he murmured gentle agreement to what she said:
"Yes? ... Ye-e-es? ... Ye-e-e-es? ... Ye-e-es? ... Is that right? ... Ye-e-es?"
Suddenly the demonic force would burst in him. Insanely tickled at the cadences of his agreement, the earnest placidity and oblivion of the old woman, and the extravagant pretense of the whole situation, his face flooded with wild exultancy, he would croon in a fat luscious bawdily suggestive voice:
"Y-ah-s? ... Y-a-h-s? ... Y-a-h-s? ... Y-ah-s?"
And when at length too late she became aware of this drowning flood of demonic nonsense, and paused, turning an abrupt startled face to him, he would burst into a wild "Whah-whah-whah-whah" of laughter, beyond all reason, with strange throat noises, tickling her roughly in the ribs.
81)
“Why do you cry, dearest?”
“I can’t tell — quite! — I am so glad to think — of being yours, and making you happy!”
“But this does not seem very much like gladness, my Tessy!”
“I mean — I cry because I have broken down in my vow! I said I would die unmarried!”
“But, if you love me you would like me to be your husband?”
“Yes, yes, yes! But O, I sometimes wish I had never been born!”
82)
Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course. We often say yes to little requests because we are not clear enough about what we need to be doing instead.
83)
"Did you know the Hoenikker children?" I asked him.
"Babies full of rabies," he said. "Yes, yes!"
84)
They looked at each other for a moment.
The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.
For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone for long enough with a Swiss Cheese plant, the moment was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a cramped and zoo-born animal who awakes one morning to find the door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savannah stretching grey and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new sounds are waking.
He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.
He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones till it now said something it had never said to him before, which was "Yes".
85)
Supposing they find out the truth?
You'll just have to say that nobody told you because you didn't need to know. Agreed?
Splendid. That's settled, then.
May one have one's tapes back?
Tomorrow. After the Committee on Privileges. All right, Humphrey?
'We are not there yet but nevertheless we are nearly there,' he answered. 'Listen with all your ears for a little click.'
What can I say to tell of my personal position? I was locked in an iron box with a sixteen-stone policeman, falling appallingly for ever, listening to talk about Walter Scott and listening for a click also.
Click!
It came at last, sharp and terrible. Almost at once the falling changed, either stopping altogether or becoming a much slower falling.
'Yes,' said the Sergeant brightly, 'we are there now.'
87)
The Mona Lisa again, he thought. Strange how her face changes, how I think it changes, how really devious she is, and how vigilant I’m going to have to be to tame this filly. I still don’t understand but a faint heart never won a fair lady. It took all of his will to keep his feet planted where they were. “I love you for all the usual reasons, and I love your cleverness. Now, formally, please, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said.
88)
lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive
(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)
89)
In the time it took to answer, several galaxies unfolded, whirled around Azrael like paper streamers, impacted, and were gone.
Then Azrael said: —
90)
She pulled into the driveway. The dog ran out from behind the house. He ran in circles on the grass. She closed her eys and leaned her head against the wheel. She listened to the ticking of the engine.
She got out of the car and went to the door. She turned on lights and put on water for tea. She opened a can and fed the dog. She sat down on the sofa with her tea.
The telephone rang.
"Yes!" she said. "Hello!" she said.
"Mrs Weiss," a man's voice said.
"Yes," she said. "This is Mrs Weiss. Is it about Scotty?" she said.
"Scotty," the voice said. "It is about Scotty," the voice said. "It has to do with Scotty, yes."
91)
For the first time I realized that music isn’t all the same, that some people play so differently from others that it becomes an entirely new set of sounds. That was the first time I heard the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, except on records, but I actually didn’t hear them at all; I listened to Beiderbecke. When we rushed out to grab our train I was completely confused. Trying to get to sleep in an upper berth I kept thinking — what about the cornet, can he play that too?
The next day we got up as the train came into Cleveland. With nothing to do but sit and stare at the scenery from there to Buffalo, I began to wonder again about the cornet. I got out my banjo, Eberhardt dug up his saxophone and doodled along with me. Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying yes.
92)
“Father, must Dirty do all that the Ten Commandments say?”
“Yes.”
He sits down by her again. His heart is overflowing with pity, his eyes are moist. She does not look at him, but plods on bravely:
“Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . . ”
“Father, when I grow big, must I also do all that the Ten Commandments say?”
“Ye-es.”
He looks at me in utter despair. Then he goes back to Dirty and listens, but now he keeps his thoughts to himself.
Suddenly, something seems to flash across his mind.
He comes to me again, puts his arms on my knee and looks with his green eyes firmly into mine:
“Father, do you do all that the Ten Commandments say?”
“Ye-e-es.”
93)
Yes
YES
94)
“Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?”
95)
“Beatrice!”
She moved a little closer and looked at me squarely with bright, pleased eyes. She put herself in the position for a permitted kiss.
“You will? Say you will!”
She smiled and uttered the nearest she ever knew to saying yes.
96)
‘Funny how things happen. You used to teach me the organ; d’you remember?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Paul.
‘And then Margot Metroland wanted to marry you; d’you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘And then you went to prison, and Alastair — that’s Margot Metrolands young man — and Metroland — that’s her husband — got you out; d’you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘I remember.’
‘And here we are talking to one another like this, up here, after all that! Funny, isn't it?’
‘Yes, it is rather.’
‘Paul, do you remember a thing you said once at the Ritz — Alastair was there — that’s Margot Metroland’s young man, you know — d’you remember? I was rather tight then too. You said, “Fortune, a much-maligned lady”. D’you remember that?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘I remember.’
97)
And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in — Yes;
Think then you are TO-DAY what YESTERDAY
You were — TO-MORROW you shall not be less.
98)
Where Larkin’s ‘Aubade’ ended in entrapment, ‘The Man and the Echo’ has preserved a freedom, and manages to pronounce a final Yes. And the Yes is valuable because we can say of it what Karl Barth said of the enormous Yes at the centre of Mozart’s music, that it has weight and significance because it overpowers and contains a No.
99)
“You’re not the same at all,” he said.
“How? Am I uglier?”
“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to her.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.
[*]
100)
. . . O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
>3) Gollum's Riddles in the Dark from The Hobbit
Correct. J. R. R. Tolkien
>7) John Cleese speaking to Mr. Wensleydale at the latter's pristine cheese shop from Monty Python's Flying Circus
Pristine? Well, it's certainly uncontaminated by cheese. Cleese & Chapman co-wrote it, apparently.
>10) e-girlta
Correct. Nabokov. HH first lays eyes on paradise.
>17) Pennywise from It (possibly speaking to Georgie at the start)
Correct, and correct. Stephen King obviously.
>26) King of Elfland's Daughter
Correct. Lord Dunsany.
>28) American Psycho
Correct. B. E. Ellis. The "Van Patten" helps I guess.
>65) No clue what the original is, but Principal Rooney quotes this in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
It's a pretty famous line & has been quoted in several films. Someone should be able to name the author I think (IQfy talks about him all the time).
>79) To the Lighthouse
Correct, Virginia Woolf. Opening line.
>93) That kid's poem about the tiger escaping its cage?
Might be. But what is his name, and more importantly, how old is he?
Is 70 DH Lawrence? Anyway I’ve noticed you included him in these quizzes a few times. Are you a fan? If so have you ever read The Plumed Serpent? That book has so many mixed reviews I’m not sure if I should read it even though he’s one of my favorites. And 99 is W&P I think. 17 is IT. I’ll put in more effort when I have time after the golf course
>Is 70 DH Lawrence?
It is. Hard to hide DHL. He always sounds just like DHL.
>Anyway I’ve noticed you included him in these quizzes a few times. Are you a fan?
He's OK. I think he's basically right about a lot of things. That said, he does takes himself very seriously and doesn't have much sense of humour, which can get annoying after a while.
>If so have you ever read The Plumed Serpent? That book has so many mixed reviews I’m not sure if I should read it even though he’s one of my favorites.
It's a funny mixture. If you've read Kangaroo, it's a bit like that but in Mexico. I don't think it's that great. He's trying to be a political theorist which is not his forte. He's much better just describing things and people at the personal scale.
>And 99 is W&P I think.
Correct, Tolstoy. Good old Natasha. (Well, good-ish.)
>17 is IT.
Correct, Stephen King, although someone already got it.
I’ve never read Kangaroo either. The whole political thing makes me wary, though I think I can see why he held the beliefs he did when you look at his life and literary career.
How long does it take you to make these quizzes? I appreciate that someone still puts in effort and time on IQfy
>How long does it take you to make these quizzes?
Hard to say because I don't do them in one go. Having thought of a theme I just make a note of appropriate extracts as I remember them or encounter them. It's going to be some number of hours spread over some number of weeks.
I've listened to their whole discography, correct. Here they are ranked from best to worst
Close To The Edge
The Yes Album
Drama
90125
Relayer
Fragile
Going For The One
Talk
Time And A Word
Big Generator
s/t
Tales From Topographical Oceans
Open Your Eyes
Fly From Here
ABWH
Mirror To The Sky
The Quest
The Ladder
Keystudio
Heaven & Earth
Magnification
Tormato
I only know one Yes song, which is Roundabout from Fragile. I got tired of hearing the first three seconds in that meme where people stop a video clip just before something awful happens. I wanted to know what came next in the music.
>78 >Conrad, Heart of Darkness?
Correct. The point being of course that she didn't understand him at all.
>2 >Dickens, Mystery of Edwin Drood
Correct. One of the harder questions, I think. Dickens wrote lots of books and they're all very long and this isn't one of the more well-known.
There's a lot of negativity around these days. For a change, here are a hundred Yesses to identify. Admittedly, one or two might be ironic, equivocal, bitter, despairing, uneasy, evasive, sarcastic, resigned, contemptuous, mocking, procrastinatory or downright dishonest. But most are sincere. A good proportion, anyway.
Some non-fiction. Some screenplays (TV and film). Works in translation are marked [*] (with a couple of borderline cases treated as legitimate English-language works in their own right). Hints on request.
The authors (none repeated):
Douglas Adams, Dante Alighieri, John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Saint Augustine
Honoré de Balzac, Samuel Beckett, John Berryman, James Boswell, Richard Brautigan, Flann O'Brien, Patrick O'Brien, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Browning
Albert Camus, Thomas Carlyle, John le Carré, Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, James Clavell, James Clear, John Cleese & Graham Chapman, Eddie Condon, Flannery O'Connor, Joseph Conrad, William Cooper, Hart Crane, Richmal Crompton, e. e. cummings
Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Isak Dinesen, Roddy Doyle, Lord Dunsany
George Eliot, Brett Easton Ellis
William Faulkner, Edward Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, John Fowles
William Golding, Richard Gordon, Robert Graves, William Lindsay Gresham
Thomas Hardy, Seamus Heaney, Ernest Hemingway, G. M. Hopkins, Ted Hughes
Henry James, William James, Antony Jay & Jonathan Lynn, James Joyce
Ken Kesey, Stephen King
Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Elmore Leonard, C. S. Lewis
Thomas Mann, Cormac McCarthy, Louis Mellis & David Scinto, Margaret Mitchell, Iris Murdoch
Vladimir Nabokov, Nael (age 6), Friedrich Nietzsche
Octavio Paz, Fernando Pessoa, Plato, Terry Pratchett
Christina Rossetti, Damon Runyon
J. D. Salinger, John Scarne, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Smart, Gary Snyder, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Robert Louis Stevenson
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, James Thurber, J. R. R. Tolkien, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain
Jules Verne, Kurt Vonnegut
Evelyn Waugh, H. G. Wells, Irvine Welsh, Walt Whitman, P. G. Wodehouse, Thomas Wolfe, Virginia Woolf, Alexander Woollcott
1)
Scotland kicked off.
— Denis Law taps to Eddie Gray —
I got a foot in; the ball hit the gate.
— Yessss!
— My word, said the commentator. A goal by Best. One-nil to Northern Ireland.
2)
‘I hope you do not object, sir, to my having stated in public, emphatically, that he will reappear here, whenever any new suspicion may be awakened, or any new circumstance may come to light in this extraordinary matter?’
‘Not at all,’ returned the Dean. ‘And yet, do you know, I don’t think,’ with a very nice and neat emphasis on those two words: ‘I *don’t think* I would state it emphatically. State it? Ye-e-es! But emphatically? No-o-o. I think not. In point of fact, Mr. Crisparkle, keeping our hearts warm and our heads cool, we clergy need do nothing emphatically.’
3)
It’s got to ask uss a quesstion, my preciouss, yes, yess, yesss.
4)
At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr. James Macpherson, as translations of Ossian, was at its height. Johnson had all along denied their authenticity; and, what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained that they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr. Fordyce, Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems? Johnson replied, ‘Yes, Sir, many men, many women, and many children.’
5)
The babe, the babe, the old woman crooned.
They ain't nary’n.
Hah, said the old woman. Bagged for the river trade I’d judge. Yon sow there might make ye a travelin mate that’s downed her hoggets save one.
She sat very straight in the chair. Cradled among stovewood against the wall was a sleeping hog she had not seen. The old woman turned, a small bent androgyne gesturing with a black spoon, waiting.
That’s a lie what you said, the girl whispered hoarsely. I never. He was took from me. A chap. I’m a-huntin him.
Your hand to God, the old woman said.
She raised her hand slightly from the table. Yes, she said.
6)
Now, what constitutes a cheater at cards? I myself am sometimes, after all these years and meditations, perplexed about a player: shall he go into my book as a scoundrel or as just a thoroughgoing no-holds barred good player? I used to play Gin Rummy with an elderly lady, a business acquaintance of mine, who might be characterized as straddling this borderline. She has a habit, after the cards have been cut for her deal, of peeking at the bottom card in squaring the pack. Harmless? Yes. She's looking at a card that will never get into the play of the hand. Harmless? Ye-e-es. But her very knowledge that this card is dead gives her a measurable percentage of advantage over me in planning the play. She has seized relevant evidence that is not available to me.
*She is a cheat.*
7)
— Tell me...
— Yessir?
— Have you in fact got any cheese here at all?
— Yes, sir.
— Really?
— No. Not really, sir.
8)
The seven-million dollar actor in the jacket a bum wouldn't wear told the headwaiter he felt like an omelet, hesitant about it, almost apologetic. Could he have a cheese omelet with shallots, but with the shallots only slightly browned? The headwaiter said yes, of course. Then could he have some kind of light tomato sauce over it with just a hint of garlic but, please, no oregano? Of course.
9)
‘Look, Jonas,’ Margie says, ‘are you going to stand here and hear me insulted? If you are, I am leaving right now,’ she says. Then she starts for the door, and Jonas runs after her and grabs her by the arm and says:
‘But, Margie,’ he says, ‘what can I do?’
‘Well,’ Margie says, ‘you can boff this big ape for one thing, as any gentleman is bound to do, unless,’ she says, ‘there is even more umbrella in you than ever I suspect.’
‘Why, yes,’ Jonas says. ‘To be sure, and certainly,’ he says.
10)
Au fond, ca m'est bien egal. All I know is that while the Haze woman and I went down the steps into the breathless garden, my knees were like reflections of knees in rippling water, and my lips were like sand, and —
"That was my Lo," she said, "and these are my lilies."
"Yes," I said, "yes. They are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"
11)
He bellowed from our bridge: “O Malebranche!
Here’s one of Santa Zita’s Elders: press
Him under, while I go for more; and thank
That city, which supplies them to excess.
Except Bonturo, all are barrators there:
For cash they’ll alter any ‘No’ to ‘Yes’!”
[*]
12)
“12. Say ‘Yes’ to every reasonable request made of you in the course of one day.”
All right, start making some. I can’t think of a single one offhand. The word ‘reasonable’ has taken a terrible tossing around in my life — both personal and business. If you mean watering the geraniums, I’ll do that. If you mean walking around Central Park with you for the fresh air and exercise, you are crazy.
13)
. . . . Is he married?
I cannot hate thee worser than I do
If thou again say ‘Yes.’
14)
Once upon a time (I said, and he stared bitterly bitterly at the floor) there was a very ugly monster who captured a princess and put her in a dungeon in his castle. Every evening he made her sit with him and ordered her to say to him, "You are very handsome, my lord," And every evening she said, "You are very ugly, you monster." And then the monster looked very hurt and sad and stared at the floor. So one evening the princess said, "If you do this thing and that thing you might be handsome," but the monster said, "I can't, I can't." The princess said, "Try, try." But the monster said, "I can't, I can't." Every evening it was the same. He asked her to lie, and she wouldn't. So the princess began to think that he really enjoyed being a monster and very ugly. Then one day she saw he was crying when she'd told him, for the fiftieth time, that he was ugly. So she said, "You can become very handsome if you do just one thing. Will you do it?" Yes, he said, at last, he would try to do it. So she said, then set me free. And he set her free. And suddenly, he wasn't ugly any more, he was a prince who had been bewitched. And he followed the princess out of the castle. And they both lived happily ever afterwards.
15)
. . . and stars will stick
like tacks in the night
yes oh yes yes yes two
little snails at the back
of the knee building bon-
fires something like eye-
lashes something two zippos
striking yes yes yes small and me maker.
16)
“Now, Maggie, you just listen. Aren’t I a good brother to you?”
“Ye-ye-es,” sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.
“Didn’t I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o’ purpose, and wouldn’t go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn’t?”
“Ye-ye-es — and I — lo-lo-love you so, Tom.”
“But you’re a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I’d set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing.”
“But I didn’t mean,” said Maggie; “I couldn’t help it.”
17)
“Float?” The clown’s grin widened. “Oh yes, indeed they do.”
18)
She put down the decanter and said ‘We shall have to share the glass; it is the only clean one left. Do you dislike drinking with me?’
‘I do not,’ he said, and they sat there without speaking for some minutes, nibbling cakes and silently passing the wine-glass to and fro: a friendly, companionable pause in spite of the tensions on either side. ‘Listen,’ he said at last, ‘was it as a medical man that you wished to consult me?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That is to say no.’
19)
I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer!
[*]
20)
She held herself tight to him and her lips looked for his and then found them and were against them and he felt her, fresh, new and smooth sand young and lovely with the warm, scalding coolness and unbelievable to be there in the robe that was as familiar as his clothes, or his shoes, or his duty and then she said, frightenedly, “And now let us do quickly what it is we do so that the other is all gone.”
“You want?”
“Yes,” she said almost fiercely. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
21)
The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man.
22)
Here lands female and male,
Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world, here the flame of materials,
Here spirituality the translatress, the openly-avow’d,
The ever-tending, the finale of visible forms,
The satisfier, after due long-waiting now advancing,
Yes here comes my mistress the soul.
23)
Better to write than to dare live, even if living means merely to buy bananas in the sunlight, as long as the sun lasts and there are bananas for sale.
Later, perhaps... Yes, later...
[*]
24)
‘What’s up?’ I asked sleepily.
‘You know that girl up in the ward — Molly. Remember, the one I’ve been popping up to see?’
‘Ummm.’
‘Well — listen, old man, don’t go to sleep for God’s sake! To-night I nipped up to see her as usual, and I was brimming over a bit with the old joys of spring and so forth owing to being full of beer...’
‘Disgusting.’
‘... and Christ Almighty, before I knew where I was I'd proposed to the bloody woman!’
I tried to clear sleep and alcohol out of my eyes, like soapsuds.
‘Did she accept?’ I asked, yawning.
‘Accept! She said “Yes, please,” as far as I remember. Don’t you realize what’s happened? Can’t you see the gravity of the situation?’
25)
Therefore since today, a day that is really quite cool despite the deceptive appearance of the sunlight on things, is to really be the point when everything changes for better or for worse, it might be good to examine it, see how far it goes, since the far reaches of sleep are to be delayed indefinitely. It is not even a question of them any more. What matters is how you are going to figure your way out of this new problem which has again come home to roost. Will the answer be another delay, prolonged beyond the end of time, and disguised once again as an active life intelligently pursued? Or is it to be a definite break with the past — either the no of death shutting you up in a small cell-like space or a yes whose vibrations you cannot even begin to qualify or imagine?
26)
“The twilight is further away,” said Alveric.
“Yes, yes,” said the old man without any meaning in his voice, whatever he had in his mind.
“When did it go?” said Alveric.
“The twilight, master?” said his host.
“Yes,” said Alveric.
“Ah, the twilight,” the old man said.
27)
They addressed themselves to the glass with the extreme of courtesy. Would Holger not make up some poetry for them? He had said he was a poet, before he went to hover in the hastening while. Ah, how they all yearned to hear him versify! They would love it so!
And lo, the good glass yielded and said yes! Truly there was something placable and good-humoured about the way it tapped. And then Holger the spirit began to poetize, and kept it up, copiously, circumstantially, without pausing for thought, for dear knows how long. It seemed impossible to stop him . . .
[*]
28)
“Hello?” I interrupt. “Shut up. Does everyone have my undivided attention?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Van Patten sighs, bored.
“I am calling Cindy up to get Evelyn out of coming to dinner with us,” I announce.
“Why in the hell did you invite Evelyn in the first place?” one of them asks.
29)
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
30)
“Don't tell me that honor is merely a chemical reaction or that a man who deliberately gives his life for another is merely following a behavior pattern. Is God happy with the poisoned cat dying alone in convulsions behind the billboard? Is God happy that life is cruel and that only the fittest survive? The fittest for what? Oh no, far from it. If God were omnipotent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn’t have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium. Is it blasphemy to suggest that God has his bad days when nothing goes right, and that God’s days are very, very long?”
“You’re a wise man, Mr. Clarendon. You said something about reversing the pattern.”
He smiled faintly. “You thought I had lost the place in the overlong book of my words. No sir, I had not. A woman like Mrs. West almost always ends up marrying a series of pseudo-elegant fortune hunters, tango dancers with handsome sideburns, skiing instructors with beautiful blond muscles, faded French and Italian aristocrats, shoddy princelings from the Middle East, each worse than the one before. She might even in her extremity marry a man like Mitchell. If she married me, she would marry an old bore, but at least she would marry a gentleman.”
“Yeah.”
He chuckled. “The monosyllable indicates a surfeit of Henry Clarendon IV. I don't blame you.”
31)
“We shall need this flat,” said Magdalen, “and I want you out of it now.”
I thought her answer was evasive. “Did you say you were getting married?” I asked. I began to have the feeling of responsibility again. After all, she had no father, and I felt in loco parentis. It was about the only locus I had left. And it seemed to me, now that I came to think of it, somehow fantastically unlikely that Starfield would marry a girl like Magdalen. Madge would do to hang fur coats on as well as any other female clothes-horse. But she wasn’t flashy, any more than she was rich or famous. She was a nice healthy English girl, as simple and sweet as May Day at Kew. But I imagined Starfield’s tastes as being more exotic and far from matrimonial. “Yes,” said Madge with emphasis, still as fresh as cream. “And now will you start packing?” She had a bad conscience, though, I could see from the way she avoided my eye.
32)
‘I told him that modern enlightened thought held that imprisonment merely brutalizes the criminal.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘“Oh, yes?”’
‘Ah, he agreed with you.’
‘He did nothing of the kind. He spoke in a most unpleasant, sneering voice. “It does, does it?” he said. And I said “Yes, it does.” He then said something about modern enlightened thought which I cannot repeat.’
33)
I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God . . .
34)
We sat there and drank and talked about books. Art had owned a lot of books in Los Angeles, but they were all gone now. He told us that he used to spend his spare time in secondhand bookstores buying old and unusual books when he was in show business, traveling from city to city across America. Some of them were very rare autographed books, he told us, but he had bought them for very little and was forced to sell them for very little.
"They'd be worth a lot of money now," he said.
The Black woman sat there very quietly studying her brandy. A couple of times she said yes, in a sort of nice way. She used the word yes to its best advantage, when surrounded by no meaning and left alone from other words.
35)
This came to less yes than an ice cream cone
Let stand . . . though still my sense of it is brisk:
Blond silky cream, sweet cold, aches: a door shut.
Errors of order! Luck lies with the bone,
Who rushed (and rests) to meet your small mouth, risk
Your teeth irregular and passionate.
36)
“I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,” chimed in the Dowager Ingram.
“Indeed, mama, but you can — and will,” pronounced the haughty voice of Blanche, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music. “I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.”
“My darling Blanche! recollect — ”
“I do — I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will — quick, Sam!”
“Yes — yes — yes!” cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen. “Let her come — it will be excellent sport!”
37)
. . . I have seen
Your photo, I think, in the papers, nursing
A baby or mourning a corpse: each time
You had nothing to say and did not, one could see,
Observe where you were, Muse of the unique
Historical fact, defending with silence
Some world of your beholding, a silence
No explosion can conquer but a lover's Yes
Has been known to fill.
38)
One of the (china) dolls hands us a piece ay paper wi Brecht: The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Nottingham University Theatre Group on it. Doubtless a collection of zit–encrusted, squeakyvoiced wankers playing oot a miserable pretension tae the arts before graduating to work in the power stations which give the local children leukemia or investment consultancies which shut doon factories, throwing people into poverty and despair. Still, let's git the board–treading ootay the system first. Fricking toss bags, don't you agree, Sean, ma auld fellow former milkdelivering mucker?
Yesh Shimon, I shink you may have a shtrong point thair.
39)
“We are all damned,” she said, “but some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see. It’s a kind of salvation.”
The boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair. “Okay,” he almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”
“Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense.”
40)
What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman? — a woman who knows how to hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: “You are very inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you are jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?” — in short, a woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying No, and incommensurable variations of the word Yes. Is not a treatise on the words yes and no, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic, and moral work, still waiting to be written?
[*]
41)
Are you sayin' no?
No...
Is that what you're sayin'?
No, not exactly...
What are you sayin'?
I'm sayin' thanks an' all that... thanks for thinkin' of me... but I'm just gonna 'ave to turn this opportunity down...
No, you're just gonna 'ave to turn this opportunity YES!
42)
“What happens to us?” Stan’s mouth had gone dry.
“Nothing, kid, if everybody keeps his head. Never argue with a cop. That’s what you pay a mouthpiece for. Treat ’em polite and yes ’em to death and send for a mouthpiece. Hell, Stan, you got a lot to learn yet about the carny.”
43)
Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum; as Hope too often is? Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to see, to sail towards, — which hovers over Niagara Falls? In that case, victorious Analysis will have enough to do.
Alas, yes! a whole world to remake, if she could see it; work for another than she! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the inward spiritual, and the outward economical; head or heart, there is no soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are more or less of kin, and do usually go together: especially it is an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil is, there, as the parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a proportionate extent been.
44)
. . . But you have eyes now
Only for the tattered bundle of throwaway lamb.
‘Did it cry?’ you keep asking, in a three-year-old field-wide
Piercing persistence. ‘Oh yes’ I say ‘it cried.’
45)
These brothers and sisters have different natures, and some of them God framed to rule, whom he fashioned of gold; others he made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again to be husbandmen and craftsmen, and these were formed by him of brass and iron. But as they are all sprung from a common stock, a golden parent may have a silver son, or a silver parent a golden son, and then there must be a change of rank; the son of the rich must descend, and the child of the artisan rise, in the social scale; for an oracle says ‘that the State will come to an end if governed by a man of brass or iron.’
Will our citizens ever believe all this?
Not in the present generation, but in the next, perhaps, Yes.
[*]
46)
‘Do you believe in God, Emmanuelson?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Emmanuelson. He sat in silence for a time. ‘Perhaps you will think me a terrible sceptic,’ he said, ‘if I now say what I am going to say. But with the exception of God I believe in absolutely nothing whatever.’
47)
What if they hear me!
Who shall say
That such an importunity
May not at last avail?
That, weary of this Beggar's face —
They may not finally say, Yes —
To drive her from the Hall?
48)
“ . . . So Percy sends for me, all lofty,” — the brogue again: “‘You're to leave Polyakov alone. You’re to put him out of your silly woman’s mind, do you understand? You and your blasted Polly what’s-’is-name are becoming a damned nuisance, so lay off him.’ Follows it up with a rude letter. ‘We spoke and you agreed,’ copy to head cow. I wrote, ‘yes repeat no’ on the bottom and sent it back to him.”
49)
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
[*]
50)
'Mister — ' he found difficulty with his b's, m's and p's and produced them by bringing his upper lip down over his teeth like a horse does when it takes sugar out of your hand — 'long time now my friends and I been back in legal. What I mean, the old days of leaving corpses strewn all over the landscape went out with the 'forties. Me and my associates, we do all right with the girls, the hemp, and the racetrack, and when we're short there's our good friends the Unions to slip us the odd fin. Ya see, mister — ' The Grinner opened his hands and then put them back into the cradle — 'we figger the old days are gone. Big Jim Colossimo, Johnny Torrio, Dion O'Bannion, Al Capone — where are those guys today, huh? Mister, they're pushing up the morning glory by the fence. Mebbe you weren't around in the days when we used to hide up between fights in Little Bohemia up behind Milwaukee? Well, siree, in those days, people were shooting at each other so fast you'd often need a programme to tell the act from the spectators. So all right, people got tired of it — those that hadn't already got tired to death, if you get my meaning — and when the 'fifties come along and I take over the team, it's unanimous that we get out of the fireworks business. And now what, mister? Now you come along and put it to me that me and my friends assist you to let off the biggest fizzbang in history! So what do I figger to say to your proposition, Mister — er — Whoosis? Well, I tell you, mister. Everybody's got his price, see? — and for a billion dollars it's a deal. We'll put away the marbles and bring out the sling-shots. We're in.'
'Grinner, you sure take one hell of a long time to say yes,' commented Mr Midnight sourly.
51)
That reminds me of the old joke about the female soul. Question, Have women a soul? Answer, Yes. Question, Why? Answer, In order that they may be damned. Very witty.
52)
Rosy is the West,
Rosy is the South,
Roses are her cheeks,
And a rose her mouth.
When the happy Yes
Falters from her lips,
Pass and blush the news
O'er the blowing ships.
Over blowing seas,
Over seas at rest,
Pass the happy news,
Blush it thro' the West;
Till the red man dance
By his red cedar tree,
And the red man's babe
Leap, beyond the sea.
53)
Then he stood up in the boat and addressed me a long while, speaking fast and with many wavings of his hand. I told him I had no Gaelic; and at this he became very angry, and I began to suspect he thought he was talking English. Listening very close, I caught the word “whateffer” several times; but all the rest was Gaelic and might have been Greek and Hebrew for me.
“Whatever,” said I, to show him I had caught a word.
“Yes, yes — yes, yes,” says he, and then he looked at the other men, as much as to say, “I told you I spoke English,” and began again as hard as ever in the Gaelic.
54)
“What is the matter?” asked Mr. Fogg.
“My master!” gasped Passepartout — “marriage — impossible —”
“Impossible?”
“Impossible — for to-morrow.”
“Why so?”
“Because to-morrow — is Sunday!”
“Monday,” replied Mr. Fogg.
“No — to-day is Saturday.”
“Saturday? Impossible!”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes!” cried Passepartout.
[*]
55)
My part in the dethronement, the necessary abrogation, would have to be both passive and active at the same time: passive in the sense that I knew better than to wage open physical battle against my work-hardened brother — WATCH OUT warned my monitor inside, my ever-alert distress signal that shouted FIRE at the first smell of a cigarette — and active because I needed the catharsis of being part of his overthrow. I needed to wield the torch, hold the knife. I needed the stain of his actual blood on my conscience as a poultice to draw out the pus of long cowardice. I needed the nourishment of victory to give me the strength I had been cheated of by years of starvation. I needed to fell the tree that had been hogging my sunshine before I even germinated. My sunshine, my need howled. Sun to grow on! to grow out of the shadow into myself! into me! Yes.
56)
‘Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you,’ Sybil said.
‘Sharon Lipschutz said that?’
Sybil nodded vigorously.
He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know how these things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat next to me. I couldn’t push her off, could I?’
‘Yes.’
57)
Was it because they were very beautiful, very clever, or even very good — was it for one of these reasons that Chad was, so to speak, nursing his effect? Did he wish to spring them, in the Woollett phrase, with a fuller force — to confound his critic, slight though as yet the criticism, with some form of merit exquisitely incalculable? The most the critic had at all events asked was whether the persons in question were French; and that enquiry had been but a proper comment on the sound of their name. “Yes. That is no!” had been Chad’s reply; but he had immediately added that their English was the most charming in the world, so that if Strether were wanting an excuse for not getting on with them he wouldn’t in the least find one.
58)
I kept going. The woman beside me was like a coiled spring lying there. I could feel the tension under her skin. I began to sweat.
Suddenly, she uttered a queer little groan.
More ghastly thoughts rushed through my mind. Could she be ill? Was she having a heart attack? Ought I to get the hell out quick?
She groaned again, louder this time. Then all at once, she cried out, “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!’ and like a bomb whose slow fuse had finally reached the dynamite, she exploded into life.
59)
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
60)
“The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away — Blessed be the name of the Lord! But it’s so hard — Oh, it’s so hard! Only last Saturday my Joe busted a firecracker right under my nose and I knocked him sprawling. Little did I know then, how soon — Oh, if it was to do over again I’d hug him and bless him for it.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know just how you feel, Mrs. Harper, I know just exactly how you feel. No longer ago than yesterday noon, my Tom took and filled the cat full of Pain-killer, and I did think the cretur would tear the house down. And God forgive me, I cracked Tom’s head with my thimble, poor boy, poor dead boy. But he’s out of all his troubles now. And the last words I ever heard him say was to reproach — ”
But this memory was too much for the old lady, and she broke entirely down.
61)
Robert was, of course, aware that it is difficult, if not impossible, to play an impressive game of tennis and at the same time force an unwilling younger brother to search for missing balls. Reluctantly he abandoned the high-handed manner.
“Now look here,” he said, in a man-to-man tone of voice. “You wouldn’t like to sit by and watch us looking for our own tennis balls, would you?”
“Yes, I would,” said William, unmoved by the pathos of this picture.
Robert added a touch of indignation to his man-to-man manner.
“I’m sure you wouldn’t like it to be said in the village that you’d simply sat by and let us fetch our own balls.”
“Yes, I would,” said William again. “Anyway, I wouldn’t be sittin’ by. I’d be out playin’ with Ginger.”
62)
Fugitive firs and larches for a moment
Caught, past midnight, in our headlight beam
On that mad journey through unlasting lands
I cannot put a name to, years ago,
(And my companions drowsy-drunk) — those trees
Resume again their sharp appearance, perfect
Of spur and tassel, claiming memory,
Claiming affection, ‘Will we be included
In the catalogue? Yes, yes?’ they plead.
63)
She whispered “Yes” before she even thought. It was almost as if he had willed the word and she had spoken it without her own volition.
64)
“Oh you so stupid Jeff boy, of course I always love you. Always and always Jeff and I always just so good to you. Oh you so stupid Jeff and don’t know when you got it good with me. Oh dear, Jeff I certainly am so tired Jeff to-night, don’t you go be a bother to me. Yes I love you Jeff, how often you want me to tell you. Oh you so stupid Jeff, but yes I love you. Now I won’t say it no more now tonight Jeff, you hear me. You just be good Jeff now to me or else I certainly get awful angry with you. Yes I love you, sure, Jeff, though you don’t any way deserve it from me. Yes, yes I love you. Yes Jeff I say it till I certainly am very sleepy. Yes I love you now Jeff, and you certainly must stop asking me to tell you. Oh you great silly boy Jeff Campbell, sure I love you, oh you silly stupid, my own boy Jeff Campbell. Yes I love you and I certainly never won’t say it one more time to-night Jeff, now you hear me.”
65)
— Yes, he thought, between grief and nothing I will take grief.
66)
Alarcén’s contemporaries were right in accusing him of being an interloper, although they were referring more to his physical characteristics than to the singularity of his work. In effect, the most typical portions of his plays deny the values expressed by his Spanish contemporaries. And his negation contains in brief what Mexico has always opposed to Spain. His plays were an answer to Spanish vitality, which was affirmative and splendid in that epoch, expressing itself in a great Yes! to history and the passions. Lope de Vega exalted love, heroism, the superhuman, the incredible; Alarcén favored other virtues, more subtle and bourgeois: dignity, courtesy, a melancholy stoicism, a smiling modesty.
[*]
67)
“Were you happy?” — “Yes.” — “And are you still as happy?” — “Yes. And you?”
— “Then, more kisses!” — “Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?”
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!
68)
He said: ‘Suppose, then, a jury were directed to imagine a typical young person — tempted to sexual activity, and asking desperately “How do I stand?” and “Where do I go from here?” — searching for an answer to his problem in your book.’ He paused. ‘What answer do you think he’d find in your book?’
I did not say anything. He was making me feel shy again.
‘The answer he’d find would be Yes, a thousand times Yes, wouldn’t it?’
I said: ‘I think a thousand’s a bit much.’
69)
Yes, I being
the terrible puppet of my dreams, shall
lavish this on you —
70)
She came over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, looking down at him with strange golden-lighted eyes, very tender, but with a curious devilish look lurking underneath.
“Say you love me, say ‘my love’ to me,” she pleaded.
He looked back into her eyes, and saw. His face flickered with sardonic comprehension.
“I love you right enough,” he said, grimly. “But I want it to be something else.”
“But why? But why?” she insisted, bending her wonderful luminous face to him. “Why isn’t it enough?”
“Because we can go one better,” he said, putting his arms round her.
“No, we can’t,” she said, in a strong, voluptuous voice of yielding. “We can only love each other. Say ‘my love’ to me, say it, say it.”
She put her arms round his neck. He enfolded her, and kissed her subtly, murmuring in a subtle voice of love, and irony, and submission:
“Yes, — my love, yes, — my love. Let love be enough then. I love you then — I love you. I’m bored by the rest.”
“Yes,” she murmured, nestling very sweet and close to him.
71)
— Now see whether these two sentences are complete propositions: “‘If’ pleases”; “‘Because’ displeases.”
— Yes, they certainly are.
— Very well, now tell me which are the verbs here, and which the nouns.
— I see the verbs are ‘pleases’ and ‘displeases’. But the nouns — what else are they than ‘if’ and ‘because’?
— Therefore, it has been proved to satisfaction that these two conjunctions are also nouns.
— Yes, indeed.
— Can you by yourself bring this out with regard to the other parts of speech, according to the same norm?
— Yes.
[*]
72)
Yes, you said, Take care of this girl for she is what makes my blood circulate and all the stars revolve and the seasons return.
73)
“ . . . Well, we got to run the country, George. It’s ours. Make it a Scientific Organised Business Enterprise. Put idees into it. ’Lectrify it. Run the Press. Run all sorts of developments. All sorts of developments. I been talking to Lord Boom. I been talking to all sorts of people. Great things. Progress. The world on business lines. Only jes’ beginning.” . . .
He fell into a deep meditation.
He Zzzzed for a time and ceased.
“Yes,” he said at last in the tone of a man who has at last emerged with ultimate solutions to the profoundest problems.
74)
Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't have a nice day after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
75)
“I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.”
“I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the money, to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is closed.”
“Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer will you say — ”
“Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.”
71 is either a Socratic Dialogue or a parody. Assuming it's authentic, then it's (presumably) by Plato, but I don't know which one it is. I don't think it's from any of the 4 dialogues that comprise the whole trial+death of Socrates thing, though
>71 is either a Socratic Dialogue or a parody.
Nope, neither Plato nor a parody. It's one of the harder ones for sure.
(Hint: It's about 600 years after Plato.)
76)
She did not finish her dessert. She let her coffee get cold. For a while, neither of them spoke. A stranger, noticing them in the restaurant, might have thought that they were a pair of old friends who had met to discuss a misfortune. His face was gray. Her hands were trembling. Leaning toward her, he said, finally, "The reason I asked you to come here is because the firm I work for has an apartment upstairs."
"Yes," she said. "Yes."
77)
On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes.
78)
‘You were his friend,’ she went on. ‘His friend,’ she repeated, a little louder. ‘You must have been, if he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel I can speak to you — and oh! I must speak. I want you — you who have heard his last words — to know I have been worthy of him... It is not pride... Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better than any one on earth — he told me so himself . . . ’
79)
"Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs. Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.
80)
His broad mouth, even when stammering irritably or when nervousness clouded his face, was always wienered for laughter — unearthly, exultant, idiot laughter. There was in him demonic exuberance, a wild intelligence that did not come from the brain . . .
Thus, listening to an old lady of the church, who with all her power of persuasion and earnestness was unfolding the dogmas of Presbyterianism to him, he would lean forward in an attitude of exaggerated respectfulness and attention, one broad hand clinched about his knee, while he murmured gentle agreement to what she said:
"Yes? ... Ye-e-es? ... Ye-e-e-es? ... Ye-e-es? ... Is that right? ... Ye-e-es?"
Suddenly the demonic force would burst in him. Insanely tickled at the cadences of his agreement, the earnest placidity and oblivion of the old woman, and the extravagant pretense of the whole situation, his face flooded with wild exultancy, he would croon in a fat luscious bawdily suggestive voice:
"Y-ah-s? ... Y-a-h-s? ... Y-a-h-s? ... Y-ah-s?"
And when at length too late she became aware of this drowning flood of demonic nonsense, and paused, turning an abrupt startled face to him, he would burst into a wild "Whah-whah-whah-whah" of laughter, beyond all reason, with strange throat noises, tickling her roughly in the ribs.
81)
“Why do you cry, dearest?”
“I can’t tell — quite! — I am so glad to think — of being yours, and making you happy!”
“But this does not seem very much like gladness, my Tessy!”
“I mean — I cry because I have broken down in my vow! I said I would die unmarried!”
“But, if you love me you would like me to be your husband?”
“Yes, yes, yes! But O, I sometimes wish I had never been born!”
82)
Being specific about what you want and how you will achieve it helps you say no to things that derail progress, distract your attention, and pull you off course. We often say yes to little requests because we are not clear enough about what we need to be doing instead.
83)
"Did you know the Hoenikker children?" I asked him.
"Babies full of rabies," he said. "Yes, yes!"
84)
They looked at each other for a moment.
The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was coming from.
For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone for long enough with a Swiss Cheese plant, the moment was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a cramped and zoo-born animal who awakes one morning to find the door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savannah stretching grey and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new sounds are waking.
He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.
He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones till it now said something it had never said to him before, which was "Yes".
85)
Supposing they find out the truth?
You'll just have to say that nobody told you because you didn't need to know. Agreed?
Splendid. That's settled, then.
May one have one's tapes back?
Tomorrow. After the Committee on Privileges. All right, Humphrey?
Yes, Prime Minister.
>83)
Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut
>83)
>Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut
Correct. The name Hoenikker helps I guess but you still need to have read it.
86)
'Are — are we in eternity yet?' I chattered.
'We are not there yet but nevertheless we are nearly there,' he answered. 'Listen with all your ears for a little click.'
What can I say to tell of my personal position? I was locked in an iron box with a sixteen-stone policeman, falling appallingly for ever, listening to talk about Walter Scott and listening for a click also.
Click!
It came at last, sharp and terrible. Almost at once the falling changed, either stopping altogether or becoming a much slower falling.
'Yes,' said the Sergeant brightly, 'we are there now.'
87)
The Mona Lisa again, he thought. Strange how her face changes, how I think it changes, how really devious she is, and how vigilant I’m going to have to be to tame this filly. I still don’t understand but a faint heart never won a fair lady. It took all of his will to keep his feet planted where they were. “I love you for all the usual reasons, and I love your cleverness. Now, formally, please, will you marry me?”
“Yes,” she said.
88)
lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive
(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)
89)
In the time it took to answer, several galaxies unfolded, whirled around Azrael like paper streamers, impacted, and were gone.
Then Azrael said: —
90)
She pulled into the driveway. The dog ran out from behind the house. He ran in circles on the grass. She closed her eys and leaned her head against the wheel. She listened to the ticking of the engine.
She got out of the car and went to the door. She turned on lights and put on water for tea. She opened a can and fed the dog. She sat down on the sofa with her tea.
The telephone rang.
"Yes!" she said. "Hello!" she said.
"Mrs Weiss," a man's voice said.
"Yes," she said. "This is Mrs Weiss. Is it about Scotty?" she said.
"Scotty," the voice said. "It is about Scotty," the voice said. "It has to do with Scotty, yes."
91)
For the first time I realized that music isn’t all the same, that some people play so differently from others that it becomes an entirely new set of sounds. That was the first time I heard the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, except on records, but I actually didn’t hear them at all; I listened to Beiderbecke. When we rushed out to grab our train I was completely confused. Trying to get to sleep in an upper berth I kept thinking — what about the cornet, can he play that too?
The next day we got up as the train came into Cleveland. With nothing to do but sit and stare at the scenery from there to Buffalo, I began to wonder again about the cornet. I got out my banjo, Eberhardt dug up his saxophone and doodled along with me. Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying yes.
92)
“Father, must Dirty do all that the Ten Commandments say?”
“Yes.”
He sits down by her again. His heart is overflowing with pity, his eyes are moist. She does not look at him, but plods on bravely:
“Thou shalt . . . Thou shalt not . . . ”
“Father, when I grow big, must I also do all that the Ten Commandments say?”
“Ye-es.”
He looks at me in utter despair. Then he goes back to Dirty and listens, but now he keeps his thoughts to himself.
Suddenly, something seems to flash across his mind.
He comes to me again, puts his arms on my knee and looks with his green eyes firmly into mine:
“Father, do you do all that the Ten Commandments say?”
“Ye-e-es.”
93)
Yes
YES
94)
“Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?”
95)
“Beatrice!”
She moved a little closer and looked at me squarely with bright, pleased eyes. She put herself in the position for a permitted kiss.
“You will? Say you will!”
She smiled and uttered the nearest she ever knew to saying yes.
“Maybe.”
93)
The meme tiger poem
>93)
>The meme tiger poem
Correct, although you're not the first man of culture to get it. The Tiger, by Nael (age six).
96)
‘Funny how things happen. You used to teach me the organ; d’you remember?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Paul.
‘And then Margot Metroland wanted to marry you; d’you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘And then you went to prison, and Alastair — that’s Margot Metrolands young man — and Metroland — that’s her husband — got you out; d’you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘I remember.’
‘And here we are talking to one another like this, up here, after all that! Funny, isn't it?’
‘Yes, it is rather.’
‘Paul, do you remember a thing you said once at the Ritz — Alastair was there — that’s Margot Metroland’s young man, you know — d’you remember? I was rather tight then too. You said, “Fortune, a much-maligned lady”. D’you remember that?’
‘Yes,’ said Paul, ‘I remember.’
97)
And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in — Yes;
Think then you are TO-DAY what YESTERDAY
You were — TO-MORROW you shall not be less.
98)
Where Larkin’s ‘Aubade’ ended in entrapment, ‘The Man and the Echo’ has preserved a freedom, and manages to pronounce a final Yes. And the Yes is valuable because we can say of it what Karl Barth said of the enormous Yes at the centre of Mozart’s music, that it has weight and significance because it overpowers and contains a No.
99)
“You’re not the same at all,” he said.
“How? Am I uglier?”
“On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!” he whispered to her.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Natásha, joyfully.
[*]
100)
. . . O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Nice blog post
>ain't readin allat
3) Gollum's Riddles in the Dark from The Hobbit
7) John Cleese speaking to Mr. Wensleydale at the latter's pristine cheese shop from Monty Python's Flying Circus
10) e-girlta
17) Pennywise from It (possibly speaking to Georgie at the start)
26) King of Elfland's Daughter
28) American Psycho
65) No clue what the original is, but Principal Rooney quotes this in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
79) To the Lighthouse
93) That kid's poem about the tiger escaping its cage?
>3) Gollum's Riddles in the Dark from The Hobbit
Correct. J. R. R. Tolkien
>7) John Cleese speaking to Mr. Wensleydale at the latter's pristine cheese shop from Monty Python's Flying Circus
Pristine? Well, it's certainly uncontaminated by cheese. Cleese & Chapman co-wrote it, apparently.
>10) e-girlta
Correct. Nabokov. HH first lays eyes on paradise.
>17) Pennywise from It (possibly speaking to Georgie at the start)
Correct, and correct. Stephen King obviously.
>26) King of Elfland's Daughter
Correct. Lord Dunsany.
>28) American Psycho
Correct. B. E. Ellis. The "Van Patten" helps I guess.
>65) No clue what the original is, but Principal Rooney quotes this in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
It's a pretty famous line & has been quoted in several films. Someone should be able to name the author I think (IQfy talks about him all the time).
>79) To the Lighthouse
Correct, Virginia Woolf. Opening line.
>93) That kid's poem about the tiger escaping its cage?
Might be. But what is his name, and more importantly, how old is he?
93: Nael, 6 y/o.
100: Ulysses ofc
>93: Nael, 6 y/o.
Right.
>100: Ulysses ofc
Of course. James Joyce.
I just enjoyed reading all the small snippets and excerpts :^)
Is 70 DH Lawrence? Anyway I’ve noticed you included him in these quizzes a few times. Are you a fan? If so have you ever read The Plumed Serpent? That book has so many mixed reviews I’m not sure if I should read it even though he’s one of my favorites. And 99 is W&P I think. 17 is IT. I’ll put in more effort when I have time after the golf course
>Is 70 DH Lawrence?
It is. Hard to hide DHL. He always sounds just like DHL.
>Anyway I’ve noticed you included him in these quizzes a few times. Are you a fan?
He's OK. I think he's basically right about a lot of things. That said, he does takes himself very seriously and doesn't have much sense of humour, which can get annoying after a while.
>If so have you ever read The Plumed Serpent? That book has so many mixed reviews I’m not sure if I should read it even though he’s one of my favorites.
It's a funny mixture. If you've read Kangaroo, it's a bit like that but in Mexico. I don't think it's that great. He's trying to be a political theorist which is not his forte. He's much better just describing things and people at the personal scale.
>And 99 is W&P I think.
Correct, Tolstoy. Good old Natasha. (Well, good-ish.)
>17 is IT.
Correct, Stephen King, although someone already got it.
I’ve never read Kangaroo either. The whole political thing makes me wary, though I think I can see why he held the beliefs he did when you look at his life and literary career.
How long does it take you to make these quizzes? I appreciate that someone still puts in effort and time on IQfy
Bedtime bump.
>How long does it take you to make these quizzes?
Hard to say because I don't do them in one go. Having thought of a theme I just make a note of appropriate extracts as I remember them or encounter them. It's going to be some number of hours spread over some number of weeks.
I've listened to their whole discography, correct. Here they are ranked from best to worst
Close To The Edge
The Yes Album
Drama
90125
Relayer
Fragile
Going For The One
Talk
Time And A Word
Big Generator
s/t
Tales From Topographical Oceans
Open Your Eyes
Fly From Here
ABWH
Mirror To The Sky
The Quest
The Ladder
Keystudio
Heaven & Earth
Magnification
Tormato
power gap
Union
I believe you 🙂
I only know one Yes song, which is Roundabout from Fragile. I got tired of hearing the first three seconds in that meme where people stop a video clip just before something awful happens. I wanted to know what came next in the music.
which ones are unguessed now?
>which ones are unguessed now?
Errr, most of them.
>78
Conrad, Heart of Darkness?
>2
Dickens, Mystery of Edwin Drood
>78
>Conrad, Heart of Darkness?
Correct. The point being of course that she didn't understand him at all.
>2
>Dickens, Mystery of Edwin Drood
Correct. One of the harder questions, I think. Dickens wrote lots of books and they're all very long and this isn't one of the more well-known.
I love OP
Thank you for your hard work <3
Bump.
Random hint:
15, 16, 29, 31, 36, 39, 46, 47, 61, 63, 64, 72 are female authors.
(Also 79, but that's been answered.)
36 is Jane Eyre.
>36 is Jane Eyre.
Correct. Charlotte Bronte not being over-subtle about Jane's rival.
this is the third room
she loves you
Bedtime bump.
homie, it’s 7:30pm..
Depends which side of the Atlantic you are.