You live only once The logician would argue, You only live once should be rewritten as You live only once, with only next to the thing it qualifies, once. The logician would be unbearably pedantic, but there is a grain of good taste in the pedantry. Writing is often clearer and more elegant when a writer pushes an only or a not next to the thing that it quantifies. In 1962 John F. Kennedy declared, “We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard.” That sounds a lot classier than “We don’t choose to go to the moon because it is easy but because it is hard." Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style grammar
Brave New World A Novel by Aldous Huxley A man who dreams of fewer thingsBetween desire and its consummationEnding is better than mendingI am I, and wish I wasn’tSubjected to some great trial+1 More
A man who dreams of fewer things “He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.” “A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth.” philosophydreams
Between desire and its consummation Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. emotiondesire
Ending is better than mending “We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better…” noveltyrepairtrashwastemelancholyending
Subjected to some great trial Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recently as a week ago, in the Director’s office, he had imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word. Prometheus painsuffering