Can you really ask what reason Pythagoras had for abstaining from flesh? For my part I rather wonder both by what accident and in what state of soul or mind the first man did so, touched his mouth to gore and brought his lips to the flesh of a dead creature, he who set forth tables of dead, stale bodies and ventured to call food and nourishment the parts that had a little before bellowed and cried, moved and lived. How could his eyes endure the slaughter when throats were slit and hides flayed and limbs torn from limb? How could his nose endure the stench? How was it that the pollution did not turn away his taste, which made contact with the sores of others and sucked juices and serums from mortal wounds?
|
Everyone likes to think that in the past everything was so quaint, so charming. Neighbors knew each other. Kids didn't have sex. It's a freakin' fairy-tale. Life sucked then, too. It just sucked without indoor plumbing.
|
Behold then Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the Rhine or the Coliseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the shells.
|
... into that rushing beast of the night, sucked up by that great dragon, to split...
|
People will then often say, But surely it's better to remain an Agnostic just in case?' This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I've been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)
|
Inflation continues till common man is completely sucked out of money, then recession sets in and continues till he becomes suckable again.
|
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
|
Eagles may soar, free and proud, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
|
Eagles fly; but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
|
Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty....
|
One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called weasel words. When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a weasel word after another there is nothing left of the other.
|
The trouble with going with the flow is, you might wind up getting sucked down the drain.
|
I used to want to be a lawyer, but I didn't want to have half my brain sucked out.
|
But when once the earth has sucked up a dead man's blood, there is no way to raise him up.
|