Matthew Phipps Shiel

“ So far sunken into the brain was the left eye -- "
"You are -- you are Xélucha!" I shrieked; "voices now of thunder howl it within my consciousness -- and by the holy God, Xélucha, though you blight me with the breath of the hell you are, I shall clasp you, living or damned -- "
I rushed toward her. The word "Madman!" hissed as by the tongues of ten thousand serpents through the chamber, I heard; a belch of pestilent corruption puffed poisonous upon the putrid air ”

“ She comprehended the human tabernacle, my friend, its secret springs and tempers, more intimately than any savant of Salamanca who breathes. Tarare -- but Xélucha is not dead!
Vitality is not mortal; you cannot wrap flame in a shroud. Xélucha! ”

“ They belong, you know, to the Neolithic age. As the teeth fall, one by one, from the lipless mouths -- they are caught by the lap. When the lap thins -- they roll to the floor of stone. Thereafter, every tooth that drops all round the chamber sharply breaks the silence. ”

“ To travel alone with the Primordial cannot but be solemn. The moon is of the hue of the glow-worm; and Night of the sepulchre. Nux bore not less Thanatos than Hupuos, and the bitter tears of Isis redundulate to a flood. ”

“ They are circular or oblong chambers of stone, covered by great earthmounds, with a 'passage' of slabs connecting them with the outer air. All round the chamber the dead sit with head resting upon the bent knees, and consult together in silence. ”

“ Matter does not exist, then, there is no such thing, really -- it is an appearance, a spectrum -- every writer not imbecile from Plato to Fichte has, voluntary or involuntary, proved that for good. To create it is to produce an impression of its reality upon the senses of others; to destroy it is to wipe a wet rag across a scribbled slate. ”

“ In a bath of malachite the Princess Egla, waking late one morning, found Cosmo lying stiffly dead, the water covering him wholly.
"But in God's name, Mérimée!" (so he wrote) , "to think of Xélucha dead! Xélucha! Can a moon-beam, then, perish of suppurations? Can the rainbow be eaten by worms? Ha! ha! ha!"
laugh with me, my friend: 'elle dérangera l'Enfer'! She will introduce the pas de tarantule into Tophet! Xélucha, the feminine Xélucha recalling the splendid harlots of history! Weep with me -- manat rara meas lacrima per genas! expert as Thargelia; cultured as Aspatia ”

“ Of an everlasting loss of pristine wholeness the conscious body is sub-conscious, and 'pain' is its sigh at the tragedy. So with all pain -- greater, the greater the loss. The hugest of losses is, of course, the loss of Time. If you lose that, any of it, you plunge at once into the transcendentalisms, the infinitudes, of Loss; if you lose all of it -- "
"But you so wildly exaggerate! Ha! ha! You rant, I tell you, of commonplaces with the woe -- "
"Hell is where a clear, untrammelled Spirit is sub-conscious of lost Time; where it boils and writhes with envy of the living world ”

“ I have reason to believe that on Mars dwells a race whose lids are transparent like glass; so that the eyes are visible during sleep; and every varying dream moves imaged forth to the beholder in tiny panorama on the limpid iris. You cannot imagine me a mere fille! To be escortcd is to admit yourself a woman, and that is improper in Nowhere. ”