I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.
Everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.
We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.
It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.
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 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.
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.
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
It takes 3 girls to tow always; two to hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.
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 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.
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...
We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of—but we never love again.
Cultivate," I said, "a sense of humor. From a humorous point of view this lunch is rather good.
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not get upset over
George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two.
Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.
I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
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.
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.
Idling has always been my strong point.
Nothing is easier to write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.
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.
Nobody ever loved as he loves, and so, of course, the rest of the world's experience can be no guide in his case.
If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.
To be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on every occasion; and whatever impression he endeavors to create, he is sure to convey its opposite.
Speak truth, and right will take care of itself.
It must be eight years since I last saw Joseph Taboys. How pleasant it would be to meet his jovial face again, to clasp his strong hand, and to hear his cheery laugh once more! He owes me 14 shillings, too.
The more the other party thinks he's having his way, the easier always to get your own.
If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
După ce am căutat fără să găsim, se întâmplă să găsim fără să căutăm.
Ambition is only vanity ennobled.
Montmorency’s ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at.
It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story. ("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)
And we sit there, by its margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister’s kiss, and throws her silver arms around it clingingly.
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.
Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday.
Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug.
Leave me, before I get over the wall & slay you.
I answered that I thought he would never smile again.
. )
I can’t say I altogether blame the man (which is doubtless a great relief to his mind).
What I'm looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness.
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 like work. it fascinates me. I can sit and stare at it for hours
Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.
Don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker.
I do like cats. They are so unconsciously amusing. There is such a comic dignity about them, such a "How dare you!" "Go away, don't touch me" sort of air.
And we would all try to do it in our heads, and all arrive at different results, and sneer at one another.
Idling has always been my strong point. I take no credit to myself in the matter-it is a gift.
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.
It was quick work. He came, he saw, I conquered!
It is in the petty details, not in the great results, that the interest of existence lies.
The truth is, we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves.
It seems to be the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people have what he does want.
A boy's love comes from a full heart; a man's is more often the result of a full stomach.
If my name was on a serious work like this it would never get fair treatment. They would all say I had tried to be funny and failed.
We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.
I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination
. )
Cassivelaunus had prepared the river for Caesar, by planting it full of stakes (and had, no doubt, put up a notice-board).
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. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.
There is no pathos in real misery, no luxury in real grief.
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.
Nature was beautiful, even in her tears
Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the oven and baked.
If he didn`t want his opinion,why did he ask for it?
Affection will burn cheerily when the white flame of love is flickered out. Affection is a fire that can be fed from day to day and be piled up ever higher as the wintry years draw nigh.
I like idling when I ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do.
It is a most remarkable thing. I sat down with the full intention of writing something clever and original; but for the life of me I can't think of anything clever and original--at least, not at this moment.
It all comes of being so attractive, as the old lady said when she was struck by lightning.
Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.
There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas — something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.
