“Nominal damages are in effect, only a peg to hang costs on.”
Beaumont v. Greathead (1846), 3 D. & L. 636.
Neuromancer (1984)
Context: They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin. Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall.
“Nominal damages are in effect, only a peg to hang costs on.”
Beaumont v. Greathead (1846), 3 D. & L. 636.
Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 45 (p. 493)
Said of the Johnson ministry. John Major claims Boris Johnson could use 'political chicanery' to force through a no-deal Brexit https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/brexit/brexit-latest-john-major-boris-johnson-political-chicanery-637557
2010s
The New Marvel in Photography (1896)
Context: I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper. … The effect was one which could only be produced, in ordinary parlance, by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube, because the shield which covered it was impervious to any light known, even that of the electric arc. … I did not think; I investigated. I assumed that the effect must have come from the tube, since its character indicated that it could come from nowhere else. I tested it. In a few minutes there was no doubt about it. Rays were coming from the tube which had a luminescent effect upon the paper. I tried it successfully at greater and greater distances, even at two metres. It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new, something unrecorded.
Source: "As I Please," Tribune (4 August 1944)
http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/
D. H. Lawrence, Introduction to These Paintings (1929); cited from James Boulton (ed.) Late Essays and Articles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) pp. 192-3.
Criticism
Op-Ed essay "In the Name of Politics", in The New York Times (30 March 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30danforth.html
Context: As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.
Copyright is Brain Damage (2015)