“But almost as if presenting the image of some ironic answer, the wings flapped against a sudden, high, unfelt breeze, and the beast, here shorn of all fables, rose and rose—for a while—under the night.”

Section 3 (p. 245; closing words)
Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)

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Samuel R. Delany 131
American author, professor and literary critic 1942

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Nigel Rees explains the phrase thus: "The poem 'Sacred Emily' by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) is well-nigh impenetrable to the average reader but somehow it has managed to give a format phrase to the language. If something is incapable of explanation, one says, for example, 'a cloud is a cloud is a cloud.' What Stein wrote, however, is frequently misunderstood. She did not say 'A rose is a rose is a rose,' as she might well have done, but 'Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose' (i.e. no indefinite article at the start and three not two repetitions.) The Rose in question was not a flower but an allusion to the English painter, Sir Francis Rose, 'whom she and I regarded' wrote Constantine Fitzgibbon, 'as the peer of Matisse and Picasso, and whose paintings — or at least painting — hung in her Paris drawing-room while a Gauguin was relegated to the lavatory.'" - Sayings of the Century, page 91
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This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, —painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

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