Watt

brambles, or of briars, or of thistles, or of nettles

is to say fully one half of what won its way past my tympan.

boughs and withes of willow

Having oscillated all his life between the torments of a superficial loitering and the horrors of disinterested endeavour, he finds himself at last in a situation where to do nothing exclusively would be an act of the highest value, and significance. And what happens?

And if there were two things that Watt loathed, one was the earth, and the other was the sky.

So, settling his hat firmly on his head, and reaching forward for his bags, he rolled himself over into the ditch, and lay there, on his face, half buried in the wild long grass, the foxgloves, the hyssop, the pretty nettles, the high pouting hemlock, and other ditch weeds and flowers. And it was to him lying thus that there came, with great distinctness, from afar, from without, yes, really it seemed from without, the voices, indifferent in quality, of a mixed choir.

God is a witness that cannot be sworn.

adapt to the contingencies of the world

written in dribs and drabs