Litotes

Because I could not stop for Death –

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing.

an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me,

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I

Without horror, through stinking shadows.

…poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved...books like this cannot be useless.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

…and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.

It must be added that she had a very slender repertoire of smiles, and that these were all produced upon the recommendation of her father.

She had wanted to see life, and fortune had favoured her in a manner which now, as she looked about her, struck her as almost grotesque. The dry staring fact was that she had a great deal of money.

of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and

For my unconquerable soul.

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say …

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed

She had been walking for some time before she realized what it was that had happened. The streets were empty, the houses shut up, and she was alone.

still content to reassemble every winter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were

The bull was squared on all four feet to be killed, and Romero killed directly below us. He killed not as he had been forced to by the last bull, but as he wanted

…if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.

About suffering they were never wrong,

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.