"Mamma had scarcely turn'd her back,
The thumb was in, alack! Alack!
The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legg'd scissor-man."
- Heinrich Hoffmann, "Little Suck-a-Thumb"
Heinrich Hoffmann

In Hoffmann's nursery rhymes, children are cruelly punished for their bad habits.

'...lay down awhile among the foxgloves and the ferns, each flower, each emerald leaf, each soft-winged creature and fleck of summer rain will offer up its own deep song...' Medicine Garden, Caroline Mellor #BookwormSat #Bloomscrolling #flowers #nature #bees me

'...if you lay down awhile among the foxgloves and the ferns, each flower, each emerald leaf, each soft-winged creature and fleck of summer rain will offer up its own deep song; a light to call you home.' Medicine Garden, Caroline Mellor #BookwormSat #plants #flowers #nature me

Morgan le Fay "espied [her husband] King Uriens lying in his bed sleeping. Then she called unto her a maiden of her counsel, and said, 'Go fetch me my lord’s sword, for I saw never better time to slay him than now.'"
- Thomas Malory, "Le Morte d'Arthur"
Iren Horrors

"Here at least we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence.
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
- John Milton, "Paradise Lost"
Gustave Doré

"On the roof - not sitting, but standing on the roof - swaying with superb balance as it came at full speed round the corner with one wheel in the air - was Jadis the Queen of Queens and the Terror of Charn. Her teeth were bared, her eyes shone like fire, and her long hair streamed out behind her like a comet's tail."
- C. S. Lewis, "The Magician's Nephew"
Pauline Baynes

"In our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
John Tenniel

Happy International Women's Day “I had been old and stern for so long, carved with regrets and years like a monolith. But that was only a shape I had been poured into. I did not have to keep it.” ~ Madeline Miller, Circe Circe - Beatrice Offor, 1911 #InternationalWomensDay2025 #BookwormSat

"My birthday began with the water birds
And the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses.
And I rose in rainy autumn,
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days."
- Dylan Thomas, "A Poem in October"

Celebrate Antoine Wiertz's birthday and his premature burial masterpiece with the theme strange things that happen around coffins and in graveyards.

#BookWormSat The Fairy Coffins, discovered in 1836 in Edinburgh, are a mystery with no clear origin. Though dubbed “Fairy Coffins,” they aren’t linked to fairy rites. Early theories link them to witchcraft, particularly near Arthur’s Seat, known for witch gatherings. #FairyCoffins #StrangeThings

The Edinburgh Fairy Coffins in Public Domain

"Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" (Act 1, Scene 2)

"The starry void shuddered and convulsed. And everything was cast out. Everything but me. Alone in the darkness. In [my brother's] eyes, I had seen something of my father. A hunger. I took a moment to clothe my form in flames. And I stepped out of the void... and into the world."
- George O'Connor, "Dionysos"
George O'Connor

"A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day,
To buy us some man's love; and lo, they bring
A master of our flesh! There comes the sting....
And then the jeopardy....
What shall that master be?"
- Euripides, "Medea"
Frederick Sandys

'Thaw' by Edward Thomas Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm-tops, delicate as flowers of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass. #BookWormSat #Imbolc #Spring 'The Rookery' by Edward Bawden, 1954

'I am the dream of awakening. I am the returning of the light. I am the tough green shoot pushing up through the pavestones, I am the first kiss of sunlight on the unfurling petals of the snowdrop...' Imbolc by Caroline Mellor #BookWormSat #Poetry #Imbolc #StBrigidsDay #Nature

"All extremes of feeling are allied with madness."
- Virginia Woolf, "Orlando"

"All extremes of feeling are allied with madness." - Virginia Woolf, "Orlando" #BookWormSat #BookChatWeekly #Literature #VirginiaWoolf

a woman with blonde hair is we...

#BookwormSat Amid the vast, eternal ice, The crystal plain, the drifting floe, Dark chasm, awful precipice, Buried for ages deep in snow, The polar white bear, grim and gaunt, Chooseth his solitary haunt. Polar Bear by Isaac McLellan (1806 – 1899) discoverpoetry.com/poems/isaac-...

"What are our plans?" asked Nikabrik. "Battle or flight?"

"Battle if need be," said Trumpkin. "But we are hardly ready for it yet...."

"I don't like the idea of running away," said Caspian.

"Hear him! Hear him!" said the Bulgy Bears. "Whatever we do, don't let's have any running. Especially not before supper; and not too soon after it neither."

- C. S. Lewis, "Prince Caspian"

Then the only other creature who is allowed at the Pack Council - Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle: old Baloo, who can come and go where he pleases because he eats only nuts and roots and honey - rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.

"The man’s cub - the man’s cub?" he said. "I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub."

- Rudyard Kipling, “The Jungle Book”