“The god’s expression was calm and content, as if he’d just come home from a lovely evening strolling through the Fields of Punishment, enjoying the screams of the damned.”

The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: So that at length the Priests of Delphos being quite baffled with the railleries of those learned Wits, renounced all Verses, at least as to the speaking them from the Tripos; for there were still some Poets maintain'd in the Temple, who at leisure turned into Verse, what the Divine fury had inspired the Pythian Priestess withal in Prose. It was very pretty, that Men could not be contented to take the Oracle just as it came piping hot from the Mouth of their God. But perhaps, when they had come a great way for it, they thought it would look silly to carry home an Oracle in Prose.<!--pp. 221-222

"Meaning" (1991)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 101.

KSCA interview (1996)

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.24

Source: Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=oopv (1754), Line 87

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)