All Questions

Though slow to quarell,and for sport killing nothing that lived,they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms.

Nonetheless,ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were,if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps,so unwearyingly fond of good things not least ...

Can I compare an elephant's brain to a human brain using hyperbole?PLease help me out. "My brain is big as an elephant's brain"

How does the room in hell in the first scene of the French play Huis Clos (No Exit in English) by Jean-Paul Sartre look like and how does Joseph Garcin react to it?

While there was still a king they were in name his subjects, but they were, in fact, ruled by their own chieftains and meddled not at all with events in the world outside. What does "they were in ...

About this time legend among the Hobbits first becomes history with a reckoning of years. What does "reckoning of years" mean in this passage from The Lord of the Rings?

Little Women is partially inspired by Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, with chapter titles and themes borrowed from Bunyan's story, and reading the book itself being an early activity the girls share. ...

Christopher John Reuel Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien's third son, died very recently. He is best know for editing and publishing materials he inherited from his father, including these three books: The ...

For a high school course in English literature, I'm reading Macbeth. On a basic multiple choice question about Act IV, scene I, I am given the following: The Witches threw into the cauldron ...

There's a lot about "A Brief History of Seven Killings" that I don't quite understand, including this near the end:

I am a sixteen year old student. Can you suggest some nice fiction books for me. I generally prefer fantasy.

On Wikipedia I came across a quote by Tacitus which says: To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace. From my ...

Note that I am not interested in theoretical and philosophical works in the tradition of liberal philosophy but rather works of literature and poetry (probably in the romanticist vein) in praise of ...

Wayne Dyer on his program asked an African lady to come up to stage. She was a prisoner by the rebels in one of She had a compelling story. She had found God while she was been captive by the rebels ...

Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation. I found this quote, like many, attributed to Rumi (one, two, three non-verifiable sources). Since Rumi quotes are notoriously often ...

I have recently annotated this poem and when looking online, I have found that my interpretation of the poem in some aspects is a bit different to most others. I just want to make sure that my ...

So, my Latin textbook, Hereditas Linguae Latinae, tells me (in the lesson about deponent verbs) that Jean de La Fontaine wrote, at the end of his fable The Cock and the Jewel, a Latin saying Stulti ...

Are cats truly 'the noisiest of all creatures and curious too'? Even if they are, I don't think that sorrow or worry can kill them. Did Jonson and Shakespeare think so? If not, why write this? 'care' ...

To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night. Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the ...

Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother ...

So, do some of you happen to know, did Gustave Flaubert really say Pulchritudo vitae in vico, ea videtur solummodo a poetis, ea non videtur a hominibus in vicis. or anything like that? If so, where? ...

I just finished The Secret Generations, a British spy novel set around 1910 by John Gardner, and one character I am wondering about is Brenner. It is clearly mentioned that this is a codename for ...

I'm not a native English speaker and cannot get the full meaning of this part of Artemus Ward's work named "On Forts". I have highlighted difficult words: It is rarely seldum that I seek ...

I was reading one of the master-pieces by Stephen Spender, "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum". Following are the starting lines of the second of four octaves: Our sour cream walls, ...

Our teacher has asked us about the subject of "Discursive Hybridity" in Don Quixote, I've read about it but I'm not still so sure what it actually designates. So here I am asking for your help. What ...

In popular culture, Pynchon is best known (quite often by those who haven't read his work) as a zany, mischievous creator of large and very difficult to read books. His use of language and portrayal ...

The first red arrow below refers to 'differential or difference dialectic'. Does 'differential dialectic' truly mean the same as 'difference dialectic'? If so, isn't 'difference dialectic' ...

Could someone please answer the following questions? 1- What is an “editorial novelist”? 2- What does “dude” and “literary dude” mean in the following passages: All are mentioned in a New Yorker ...

Letters to a Law Student: A Guide to Studying Law at University. (2017 4 ed). p 50. In an observation that is now so clichéd, you won’t be able to believe how much I hate myself for repeating it, ...

his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection, and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness What does "...

In Hanya Yanagihara’s “Little Life”, the narration toggles between the four protagonists. When it focuses on either of them, his name is usually mentioned once and then consecutively omitted and ...

An acquaintance is trying to find a short story she read some years ago (I am sorry she could not identify how far). She thinks she read it in Reader's Digest, or in a collection of stories from it. ...

From Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d" While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions. Here what is the meaning of "be bound in"? Does ...

I know some novels or sagas where the title of the work appears to be some variation of the protagonist's name. For example, the Aeneid is named after Aeneas. In high fantasy, the Belgariad is named ...

Many comic books and graphic novels contain several pages (usually at the end of the book) which may expand on the lore or may contain biographical information about the authors. Others may contain ...

The poem "Neutral Tones" by Thomas Hardy was written in 1867 and published in the 1898 collection Wessex Poems and Other Verses. It contains the stanza: The smile on your mouth was the deadest ...

So I'm reading Gregory Hays's translation of Marcus Aurelius's meditations and there's a section I'm fairly stuck on. The full section (book 6, section 57) is: Honey tastes bitter to a man with ...

"That is a very dreadful story," said the Padre. "Very," said I, "and there are some rather odd points about it. Did commercial travellers dash about in motorcars when Popper was a youngster? And ...

I am looking for the original Persian version of the following poems of Rumi. These poems are from "The Essential Rumi" by Coleman Barks. The numbers refer to the Furuzanfar's edition of Kulliyat-e ...

In Ted Hughes' "Owl's Song" (in Crow collection), the last line of the first verse seems quite obscure: He sang how the swan blanched forever How the wolf threw away its telltale heart And ...

I'm trying to find the name of a fin-de-siècle writer/feuilletoniste/journalist who wrote very short fiction pieces based on crime stories in the Paris newspapers. A collection of these was published ...

"We Are Seven" is a poem by William Wordsworth and this poem depicts the innocent nature of a child who just does not want to understand that her siblings have passed away of natural causes and ...

Moore's poetry was by then generally considered inauthentic, tawdry tinsel and his politics meek, servile and toothless. William Butler Yeats replaced Moore as Ireland's national poet. James Joyce's ...

I can not remember the author, but this seems was Ray Bradbury. However, I've already read couple of his short stories, which would be matched by titles, and found nothing. It's probably not Ray ...

In The Merchant Of Venice by William Shakespeare, Act I Scene I Antonio : Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it,                My ventures are ...

The term "Subject Races" is used a few times in H. G. Wells's novel The War in the Air. I have been looking around but only found a paper called "The Treatment of Subject Races", is this related?

In Zola's Rougon-Macquart novels, specifically La Fortune des Rougon, set in December 1851, around the time of Napoleon III's coup d'etat, Pierre Rougon seeks to obtain the post of "receveur ...

O western orb sailing the heaven, Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d, As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell ...

Tom Bombadil is definitely one of the weirdest characters in all of The Lord of the Rings, he just comes out of nowhere, stumbling upon Frodo and Sam while singing. His actions are just incredibly ...

What does the last quote of the short story 'The Trial for Murder' mean? Why did the 'Murderer' says [...] Before I was taken, he somehow got to my bedside in the night, woke me, and put a rope ...