When a man or woman loves to brood over a sorrow and takes care to keep it green in their memory, you may be sure it is no longer a pain to them.
The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.
If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply.
(Speaking of the Cistercian monks) A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them--the soft singing of the waters, the wisperings of the river grass, the music of the rushing wind--should not have taught them a truer meaning of life than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
Think of the man who first tried German sausage.
There are two kinds of clocks. There is the clock that is always wrong, and that knows it is wrong, and glories in it; and there is the clock that is always right - except when you rely upon it, and then it is more wrong than you would think a clock could be in a civilized country.
They [dogs] never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake.
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of—but we never love again.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.
One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.
Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.
Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination
I could not conjure up one melancholy fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of champagne.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
In the future there are going to be no pretty girls, for the simple reason there will be no plain girls against which to contrast them. Of late I have done some systematic reading of ladies papers. The plain girl submits to a course of "treatment." In eighteen months she bursts upon Society an acknowledged beauty.
The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him. He is able, to a certain extent, to communicate his misery. He frightens other people as much as they frighten him. He acts like a damper upon the whole room, and the most jovial spirits become, in his presence, depressed and nervous.
Idling has always been my strong point.
What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow.
The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.
A glass of wine often makes me a better man than hearing a sermon.
Cassivelaunus had prepared the river for Caesar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no doubt, put up a notice-board).
"Not sure," he retorted; "you call yourself a journalist, and admit there is a subject under Heaven of which you are not sure!"
He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him.
I respect the truth too much to drag it out on every occasion.
There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one.
Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure in creating the impossible.
It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.
I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction one receives : “Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost — but not quite — to touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis. Now without opening your lips say "Garoo".' And when you have done it they are not satisfied.
Cheese, like oil, makes too much of itself.
A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.
Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.
It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man's life - the priceless moments that will never come back to him again - being wasted in a mere brutish sleep.
The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.
I like cats.... When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stoop down and tickle the side of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner, arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is gentleness and peace.
We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment.
I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company.
Give an average baby a fair chance, and if it doesn't do something it oughtn't to a doctor should be called in at once.
The odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.
I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.
That the boat did not upset I simply state as a fact. Why it did not upset I am unable to offer any reason. I have often thought about the matter since, but I have never succeeded in arriving at any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Possibly the result may have been brought about by the natural obstinacy of all things in this world. The boat may possibly have come to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behaviour, that we had come out for a morning's suicide, and had thereupon determined to disappoint us. That is the only suggestion I can offer.
That is just the way with Memory; nothing that she brings to us is complete. She is a willful child; all her toys are broken. I remember tumbling into a huge dust-hole when a very small boy, but I have not the faintest recollection of ever getting out again; and if memory were all we had to trust to, I should be compelled to believe I was there still.
There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
It is no more effort for a man to be a saint than to be a sinner; it becomes a mere matter of habit.
If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.
We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe.
People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.
It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.... We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach, and diet it with care and judgment. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own; and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband, and a tender father—a noble, pious man.
I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.
We drink [to] one another's health and spoil our own.
You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.
Swearing relieves the feelings - that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.
Contented, unambitious people are all very well in their way. They form a neat, useful background for great portraits to be painted against, and they make a respectable, if not particularly intelligent, audience for the active spirits of the age to play before. I have not a word to say against contented people so long as they keep quiet.
A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.
I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.
Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around, and what to him, within the vision of his life, is the greatest and the best, that he falls down and does reverence to.
A good woman's arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.
The proverbial Englishman, we know from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness itself.
I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent's Circus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting.
Conceit is the finest armour a man can wear.
Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.
There are many families where the whole interest of life is centered upon the dog.
If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't you won't get any.
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
A boy's muscles move quicker than his thoughts.
It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends, fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.
Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago,“ has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday.
I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet.
Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.
Ambition is only vanity ennobled.
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over
All is vanity and everybody's vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men - more so, if possible.
In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it!
Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards.
Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.
Seek out some retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes - some half-forgotten nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world - some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and faint.
We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.
Better to work and fail than to sleep one's life away.
Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics.
Cultivate a sense of humour. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.
There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them.
Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.
It is only the first baby that takes up the whole of a woman's time.Five or six do not require nearly so much attention as one.
I can see the humorous side of things and enjoy the fun when it comes; but look where I will, there seems to me always more sadness than joy in life.
Weather in towns is like a skylark in a counting-house-out of place and in the way.
I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got.
Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.
I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.
The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.
I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.
Among all nations there should be vast temples raised where people might worship in silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God
Too much of anything is a mistake, as the man said when his wife presented him with four new healthy children in one day. We should practice moderation in all matters.
Love is woman's business,and in "business" we all lay aside our natural weaknesses.
I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.
After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!
Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection.
But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug.
I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.
Life works upon a compensating balance, and the happiness we gain in one direction we lose in another.
It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.
It's really extraordinary what a variety of ways of loving there must be. We all do it as it was never done before.
The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.
Five thousand people in one society might do something, but five thousand societies of one member each would be a holy trouble.
It takes 3 girls to tow always; two to hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.
What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change.
There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.
1lb beefstak, with 1pt bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don't stuff your head with things you don't understand.
I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet ... the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round its withered limbs.
The weather is like the government, always in the wrong.
We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy. You have KNOWN happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months, and the Prince's arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince's kisses on your lips; the gods themselves cannot take THAT from you.
A Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.
There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing. It comes as near to flying as man has got to yet - except in dreams.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do.
