#-------------------------------------------------------------- # Sacred Emily, Gertrude Stein #-------------------------------------------------------------- Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Tongue twisters #-------------------------------------------------------------- Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks. The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Fox in Sox, Dr. Seuss #-------------------------------------------------------------- Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew. While these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew. Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze. Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze. That's what made these three free fleas sneeze. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Chomsky, bastardized for regex texting #-------------------------------------------------------------- Colorless wee-little green ideas sleep and eat furiously for the 1000th time. Colorless Wee-Little Green Ideas Sleep And Eat Furiously For The 1000th Time. COLORLESS WEE-LITTLE GREEN IDEAS SLEEP AND EAT FURIOUSLY FOR THE 1000TH TIME. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # 1984, George Orwell #-------------------------------------------------------------- It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen #-------------------------------------------------------------- It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes #-------------------------------------------------------------- Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe #-------------------------------------------------------------- Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more." #-------------------------------------------------------------- # A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens #-------------------------------------------------------------- It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, William Shakespeare #-------------------------------------------------------------- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. #-------------------------------------------------------------- # Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln #-------------------------------------------------------------- Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.