Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride__ride at his own humility__ill appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt__nd so on, through as many stages a you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you may awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
The Screwtape Letters
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Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride__ride at his own humility__ill appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt__nd so on, through as many stages a you please. But don't try this too long, for fear you may awake his sense of humour and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed.
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Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the movement of gills in a fish.
Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible. At his office and at his boarding-house the girls were mere mice, or cattish, or kittenish, or had insufficiently read the advertisements.
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There are some young almond tress, which ordinarily look as if drawn by a childish hand. Now, as the wind sets their weak branches gibbering, they seem like shamanistic scratches on the white bone of the brittle bright night.