I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare – or, if not, it’s some equally brainy lad – who says that it’s always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.
You would be miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with ‘Welcome’ written on him. You want some one made of sterner stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there with the return wallop.
From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
Every day you seem to know less and less about more and more.
She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.
It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.
I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use, don’t you know...
She laughed – a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.
If she ever turned into a werewolf, it would be one of those jolly breezy werewolves whom it is a pleasure to know.
The true philosopher is a man who says “All right,” and goes to sleep in his armchair.
The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: “Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?
I really preferred to walk. I have only just landed in England from New York, and it’s quite a treat to walk on an English country road again.
The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty troubles.
There is enough sadness in life without having fellows like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots.
Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.
You can’t go by what a girl says, when she’s giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It’s like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn’t mean anything.
It would take more than long-stemmed roses to change my view that you’re a despicable cowardy custard and a disgrace to a proud family. Your ancestors fought in the Crusades and were often mentioned in despatches, and you cringe like a salted snail at the thought of appearing as Santa Claus before an audience of charming children who wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s enough to make an aunt turn her face to the wall and give up the struggle.
He picked up one of the dead bats and covered it with his handkerchief. ‘Somebody’s mother,’ he murmured reverently.
Too often on such occasions one feels, as I feel so strongly with regard to poor old Stilton, that the kindly thing to do would be to seize the prospective bridegroom’s trousers in one’s teeth and draw him back from danger, as faithful dogs do to their masters on the edge of precipices on dark nights.
She was one of those women who kind of numb a fellow’s faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say how-d’you-do.