Back in the mid-noughties, we wrote a song about the single thing one-letter words spell.  Here's Ken Clinger's 1920's take on it:

http://kenclinger.bandcamp.com/track/one-letter-words-martian-1920s-mix

The imaginary yet highly influential theologian Franz Bibfeldt responded sharply to Kierkegaard's Either/Or with a treatise entitled Both/And.

(Via Futility Closet.)

An illustration from an 1895 issue of Punch magazine.

"It is a very fine line between what's real and what's not."
—Ronda L. Brulotte, Between Art and Artifact (2012)

Good news: it ain't so bad in Hell — the damned don't even want to escape — and we can offer empirical proof: folks on earth* seek longevity.

*Recall the first noble truth of Buddhism: life means suffering.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"To read is to risk making one's self vulnerable, to risk encountering what Wayne Booth has called 'the otherness that bites.'" —Megan O'Neill, Popular Culture (2001)

"Darrin, you keep asking and answering your own questions": a still from the unquestionably classic Bewitched.

"The only certainty was the money."
—Christopher Farnsworth, The President's Vampire (2011)

An illustration from a 1908 issue of Life magazine.  The caption reads: "Lily of the valley."

Thanks to Mental Floss for highlighting our dictionary of improbable words as one of six alternative references one's bookshelf needs. Chris Stokel-Walker writes:

Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/51779/6-alternative-dictionaries-your-bookshelf-needs#ixzz2aEHjd8bd

Risk comes with the territory — a rock monster. An illustration from an 1860 issue of Punch magazine.

"You may be quite surprised with the possibilities which you can put together."
—Robert L. VanDeMark, Inventory Control Techniques (1981)

One of our best-kept secrets: the other half of our daily blogging is over at our

Borgesian Circulating Depository.

The child ponders, "Shall I divide?"  Indeed:

"Cell division begins in a resting or preparatory state." —The Human Genome: A User's Guide

An illustration from an 1895 issue of Punch magazine.

It's raining cats, if not dogs.  The caption reads: "I saw many myriads of spectral kitten forms and unsubstantial egg-shapes."  From an 1895 issue of Punch.

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Puck magazine.  The caption reads: "Just Reversed: The Moon in the Man."

Rebellion and compliance are two sides of the same coin.
—Nicholas Lore, The Pathfinder (2012)

The mysterious HBG2, the genius responsible for Long-Forgotten (ruminations and revelations concerning the history and artistry of Disney's Haunted Mansion) offers a glorious forerunner to Fantasia's glamorous hippos.  Compare the Disney version of a hippo with a powder puff and hand mirror to that in a 1914 issue of Puck.  [Thanks, HBG2!]

An illustration from a 1901 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "The good fairy Electra of the continuous current banishes the demon King Sulphur."

We found a precursor to this great quip by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt: "Genius is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent eavesdropping location."  The illustration appears in The Critic, 1898.  The caption reads, "[William Makepeace] Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold evesdropping."

Confronting the 23 Enigma: an illustration from a 1906 issue of Puck magazine.  The caption reads: "Shadows."

We learn from Piers Anthony that there is no reason a unicorn can't play chess if she wishes (Unicorn Point).

"Write a novel in which the text is actually incredibly small barbed wire embedded in the page.  Make sure this novel is at least a thousand pages long and is set in a very finical font with lots of curlicues.  The reader's fingers should repeatedly get cut while reading/handling this novel, and by the time the reader is done the book should have drunk its fill of blood." —William Keckler

An illustration from an 1853 issue of Punch magazine.

"There is no absolute way to know if the dollar will go up, down or sideways—it may well do all of these things. The only certainty is that it will move." —Tim Weithers, Foreign Exchange (2011)

From our former outpost at Twitter:

An illustration from an 1842 issue of Punch magazine.

Here's a precursor to the Death Star from Star Wars, which appears in The Quiver, 1897.

An illustration from an 1858 issue of Punch magazine.

"You should always remember that nobody can own your soul. At most, they can only be allowed to repeatedly ram a bumper car into it until it finally stops working." —William Keckler

Here's a surprising bit of Hermeticism from Arthur's Illustrated Home Magazine, 1885.  A lady faces the setting sun and transmits a thought-message toward the light as she touches a dog's head.  The Greek god Hermes (a.k.a. the Roman Mercury and the Egyptian Thoth) is a solar messenger.  The Egyptians of course represented him with a dog's head.

"If you say to yourself as you walk through town 'I am so lovely' you may be quite surprised how your whole aura changes to attract other people to you."
—Jenni Adams, Stress: A New Positive Approach (1989)

An illustration from a 1904 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Her eyes seemed to see a far image of struggling souls."

From our former outpost at Twitter (where we sometimes drop the majestic plural or Victorian "we" so as to save a character):

Close reading may not always be an act of deicide, but it destroys the omniscient narrator.  "[A] close reading betrays [the omniscient narrator's] lack of omniscience even in circumstances that suggest some kind of extratextual knowledge" (John C. Weiger, In the Margins of Cervantes, 2008, p. 216).

An illustration from an 1868 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "A cross-looking ultra ritualist."

"Write a novel titled Ghost Co-Op.  Actually, I feel a novel with this title should 'write itself.'"
—William Keckler

An illustration from a 1901 issue of Punch magazine.

photo by Cobalt 123

"Apropos nothing. How blue is your ray?"
—Ran de Gota

Here's a precursor to The Man Who Fell to Earth, from an 1895 issue of The Quiver.  The caption reads, "He found himself on Mother Earth."

The right word is witch in the classic sitcom Bewitched.

"Transparency is so yesterday, and opacity so everyday, but [translucency] remains intriguingly unexplored."
—Jeff Hawkins

Previously re: translucency:

Attending a mime's birthday party

Unveiling the hidden

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
—Emily Dickinson (our 21st cousin)

Dear cousin Emily, who wrote poetry like nobody's business, surely would have retched at this illustration from The Quiver, 1884, involving a non-nobody.  The caption reads, "'You are not a nobody now,' she said."

Boxing is generally considered an extremely macho sport, but few people realize every boxing match is overseen by fairies.  An illustration from an 1860 issue of Punch magazine.

"If it's really happening, a series of things is going to happen."
—Jim Moorhead, The Instant Survivor: Right Ways to Respond When Things Go Wrong (2012)

A woman named Lauren Ibsen Dolores serves as a placeholder at Latin festivals.

An illustration by Raphael Kirchner from a 1916 issue of Puck magazine.

"No matter what the world or people tell you about yourself, always remember that you are a delicate yet hardy flower."
—Iyanla Vanzant, Don't Give It Away! (1999)

Here's a bit of flapdoodle and blatherskite from the classic sitcom Bewitched.

Show the money.

"It's the oldest trick in the book but it still works.  If you want to offer $40 for a $50 item, flashing a couple of twenties might persuade the owner to see things your way."
—Stephen Pollan & Mark Levine, The Die Broke Complete Book of Money (2012)

Q: "Why should I not think the best of those who are kind to me?" (The Quiver, 1881).

A: "The problem with kindness, for Nabokov, is that most visible or public forms of it are fake" (Will Norman & Duncan White, Transitional Nabokov, 2009).

One hundred and five years before Net Nanny parental control software: "If there were some means, now, of filtering children's eyes—!" (The Quiver, 1890).

"Shrews can be studied in the wild and under captive conditions and you may be quite surprised at what you discover."
—Charles Edmund Roth, The Wildlife Observer's Guidebook (1982)

Here's a precursor to the Orwellian NSA's rampant violations of civil liberties, from The Quiver, 1892.  The caption reads, "He could watch every word she wrote."

The mumbo jumbo of a Papal Bull: an illustration from an 1860 issue of Punch magazine.

"Sancta Nicotina Consolatrix: the poor man's friend."  An illustration from an 1869 issue of Punch magazine.

"'Can't you,' she said, 'even produce a Scotch ancestor?"  From The Leisure Hour, 1895.

We explain how to produce any ancestor of your choosing in our book Heirs to the Queen of Hearts: Tracing Magical Genealogy.

The classic Bewitched episode "Solid Gold Mother-in-Law" offers a precursor to the Seinfeld episode "The Pony Remark."

As Gary Barwin has noted, "words are happy out of context," just as people are happy to get away from it all.  Yet there's a price to be paid: words experience post-decontextualization blues.  Time out of context is supposed to revive and refresh, but sometimes the opposite is true.  Words with post-decontextualization blues feel disappointed, angry, and even depressed.  Instead of feeling rested, these words are exhausted and often feel they need another decontextualization.  Etymologists maintain that unmet expectations often account for a word's post-decontextualization blues.  Words often acquire their unrealistic expectations from promotional literature.  Brochures make every decontextualization seem wonderfully outside reality.  Visiting relative pronouns can also cause stress due to a lack of peace and quiet.  Grammarians suggest returning from a decontextualization on a Friday so that words have Saturday and Sunday to decompress and readjust.

Traditionally, a falling star is considered an inauspicious omen.  To propose marriage during a meteor shower is surely tempting fate.

This image appeared in Punch, 1866, two weeks after a dramatic Leonid meteor shower (with reports of a stunning 2000 to 5000 meteors per hour).

We found precursors to "Modern parents [who] heap so much praise on their children that they are creating a 'smug generation' with little idea of the real world" (Barry Wigmore, Daily Mail).  A baby is proclaimed "king" in The Quiver (1877), a child is nicknamed "the president" in The Leisure Hour (1858), and an extraordinary and brilliant future is predicted for "a creature so amazing" in The Quiver, 1874.

Someone should write a lurid paperback entitled Somebody Else's Honeysuckle.

(Thanks to Michael and Jonathan, who worked in tandem on this one.)

"Quite surprisingly, the idea that there may be a human 'essence' after all, even if it is not cultural but genetic, is seen as somehow 'liberating.'"
—Andreas Höfele & Stephan Laqué, Humankinds: The Renaissance and Its Anthropologies (2011)

Twenty-eight years before Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, we find a Potter and a non-wizardly Muggins in Carry On Camping (1969).

An illustration from an 1852 issue of Punch magazine.

"Well, a rose is also a noun."
—German For Dummies

The "greenhouse effect" was coined in 1992, but the carbon devil was causing nightmares all the way back in 1918, in the Illustrated World.

An illustration from an 1853 issue of Punch magazine.

Poluphlosboiothalasses!  (From Punch, 1859.)