Belle and the dragon. An elfin comedy

"Magnificent Melusine!"

"I always acknowledge that the Dragon has a good heart."

"And a remarkable development of muscle."

"I could not say the same of the Scorpion."

"No doubt, as befits a woman, her tongue is her most formidable weapon when she thinks proper to use it. The Green Dragon is the only person of whom I am physically afraid."

"You always distort my meaning."

"Because you are an accusing angel. I am only a complete philosopher, so I excuse and accuse everything with countless refinements and in a single breath; I distinguish where I cannot defend."

"Do you mean that you really agree with me, though you won't say so?"

"I mean that Ravendale may be appropriately defined as the Microcosm Microcosm: a small, representative system having analogies to a larger system (the world)."

"I know nothing about Microcosms; I suppose it is the Black Arts?"

"In other words, Ravendale is a perfect pattern and miniature counterpart of the great world."

"In what way?"

"In the way of weaknesses and vanities."

"I have no vanities or weaknesses."

"That is exactly what the great world says."

"I am not going to argue, Lucifer. You are too dark and evil."

"And you are too jeweled, sweet serpent."

"You must help me, great Mystic. You must propose something. Your poor sister is quite in despair."

"I propose to abolish all that is common and unclean. 'Let them be like the grass on the rooftops, which withers before it can be pulled up.'" original Latin: "Fiant sicut fœnum tectorum qui priusquam evellatur exaruit." A reference to Psalm 129:6.

"That is exactly what I wish, though you shouldn't use such language. But how, in heaven's name, can we do it? Here everything is unclean and common. You needn't look around this room; I am not referring to the furniture, though that is all falling to pieces. I am referring to the plagues that surround me."

"To the ancient curse of the Green Dragon, to the deadly gloom of the Gadfly's photography, to the foul-smelling odor of bicycle oils, to the tavern-like perfume of the rank tobacco, to the trail of the serpent, which is over all the laundry. Oh, though the heavens fall! original Latin: "ruat cælum" Let us have another deluge and make the world anew. I have long since concluded, on philosophical grounds, that life is a squalid fraud. Let us decide to live out the poetic."

"Ah! Yes—to speak only in poetry, to think only in poetry, to dream in poetry—if it were possible, to feed on poems!"