My dear Boris, can you not take a joke?” “Was it a joke?
I’m afraid I always find Shakespeare terribly dreary. All those long scenes where everybody is drunk and it’s supposed to be funny.
How well you express it! That is exactly the curse of a politician’s life. He has to bow to the country’s feeling, however dangerous and foolhardy he knows it to be.
You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ began Emily, knowing well that of all openings on earth this one is the most certain to provoke interest and sympathy.
Imposibilul nu poate sa se fi intamplat, ca atare imposibilul trebuie sa fie posibil, in ciuda aparentelor.
Here was a man who would never rail against fate but accept it and pass on to victory.
It is one thing to know that a man is guilty, it is quite another matter to prove him so.
And then the lights came on and suddenly it was all as usual – I don’t mean really as usual, but we were ourselves again, not just – people in the dark. People in the dark are quite different, aren’t they?
They wish not to become adult – not to have to accept our kind of responsibility. And yet like all children, they want to be thought grown up, and free to do what they think are grown up things. And that leads sometimes to tragedy and sometimes to the aftermath of tragedy.
It takes so little to undermine public confidence in a man.
Being in love has a very bad effect on men – it seems to addle their wits.
The old gentleman refuses to have the telephone which he regards as a device of the devil, and on a par with radio, television, cinema organs and jet planes, so I had to take a chance of finding him at home.
If she’d been born in an African tribe she might have been a witch doctor.
If there were only any peace in Egypt I should like it better,” said Mrs. Allerton. “But you can never be alone anywhere. Someone is always pestering you for money, or offering you donkeys, or beads, or expeditions to native villages, or duck shooting.
Hence King’s Messengers and all that. In medieval days you gave a fellow a signet ring as a sort of open sesame. ‘The King’s Ring! Pass, my lord!’ And usually it was the other fellow who had stolen it. I always wonder why some bright lad never hit on the expedient of copying the ring – making a dozen or so, and selling them at a hundred ducats apiece. They seem to have had no initiative in the Middle Ages.
Of course often those places went very cheap – islands didn’t suit everybody. They thought the idea was romantic but when they came to live there they realised the disadvantages and were only too glad to sell.
I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim-it is the picture of a girl watching her lover dies.
It is well at any price to have peace in the home.
The only thing I shall want for a rainy day will be my umbrella.
Just for a moment I hated Lymstock and its narrow boundaries, and its gossiping whispering women.