britischer Erzähler
97 quotes found
""Man weiß, wie es ist, wenn eine Frau eine andere tyrannisiert. Alle Qualen, die ein Mann auszuhalten hat, sind nichts im Vergleich mit den Stichelreden und Grausamkeiten, die arme Frauen von tyrannischen Geschlechtsgenossinnen sich gefallen lassen müssen"
"Der Faulenzer, der keinen Ehrgeiz besitzt, behauptet, es lohne sich nicht, eine gehobene Stellung zu erlangen, lehnt den Kampf ab und nennt sich einen Philosophen. Ich aber sage, dass so ein Kerl ein jämmerlicher Feigling ist."
"Die Welt ist ein Spiegel, aus dem jedem sein eigenes Gesicht entgegenblickt."
"Frauen wollen nicht nur erobern, sie wollen auch erobert sein."
"Mutter ist das Wort für Gott auf den Lippen und in den Herzen von kleinen Kindern."
"Profoundly grateful, and as if I had swallowed a small baby. … Why, they are perfect beasts of oysters!"
"She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions."
"Except for the young or very happy, I can't say I am sorry for any one who dies."
"I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, ascenticism, Bullarism."
"A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one."
"The unambitious sluggard pretends that the eminence is not worth attaining, declines altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I say he is a poor-spirited coward."
"Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb."
"Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society."
"I set it down as a maxim that it is good for a man to live where he can meet his betters, intellectual and social."
"Let us be very gentle with our neighbours' failings; and forgive our friends their debts, as we hope ourselves to be forgiven."
"When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every single woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself."
"Stupid people, people who do not know how to laugh, are always pompous and self-conceited."
"Time passes—Time the consoler—Time the anodyne—Time the grey calm satirist, whose sad smile seems to say, Look, O man, at the vanity of the objects you pursue, and of yourself who pursue them!"
"Society having ordained certain customs, men are bound to obey the law of society, and conform to its harmless orders."
"He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob."
"It is impossible, in our condition of society, not to be sometimes a Snob."
"If you will fling yourself under the wheels, will go over you, depend upon it."
"That which we call a Snob, by any other name would still be Snobbish."
"Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society—the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?"
"Try to frequent the company of your betters. In books and life that is the most wholesome society; learn to admire rightly; the great pleasure of life is that. Note what the great men admired; they admired great things: narrow spirits admire basely, and worship meanly."
"I suppose as long as novels last and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero, a wicked monster his opposite, and a pretty girl who finds a champion; bravery and virtue conquer beauty: and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him and honest folks come by their own."
"One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour."
"There is no man that teaches us to be gentlemen better than Joseph Addison."
"Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn."
"Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little"
"It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too."
"Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny."
"Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman."
"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous."
"Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover, And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her."
"As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best."
"If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!"
"How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!"
"We see flowers of good blooming in foul places."
"'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost."
"'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel."
"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write."
"If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness."
"I think Steele shone rather than sparkled."
"Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand."
"We love being in love, that's the truth on't."
"Sure, love vincit omnia; is immeasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that: he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it."
"What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables."
"The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors."
"What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes."
"The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?"
"To be beautiful is enough. If a woman can do that well, who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing."
"Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion; and, I believe, what are called broken hearts are very rare articles indeed."
"If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die deplores us forever and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom—whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!"
"Bad husbands will make bad wives."
"People hate, as they love, unreasonably."
"This a noble dish is— A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo."
"Christmas is here: Winds whistle shrill, Icy and chill, Little care we: Little we fear Weather without, Sheltered about The Mahogany Tree."
"Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin, That never has known the barber’s shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin,— Wait till you come to Forty Year."
"Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter."
"Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter."
"Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang: “Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long!”"
"The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter’s bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he’s laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that’s anything but gay."
"The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion."
"Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered."
"Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?"
"When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it."
"Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?"
"I would rather make my name than inherit it."
"He that has ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton."
"I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses."
"Who does not believe his first passion eternal?"
"Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish."
"If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied."
"'Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have even a life-enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years' lease."
"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?"
"Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?"
"Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you."
"We are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God."
"Bravery never goes out of fashion."
"It is to the middle class we must look for the safety of England."
"George, be a King!"
"Novels are sweets. All people with healthy literary appetites love them—almost all women;—a vast number of clever, hard-headed men."
"Titles are abolished; and the American Republic swarms with men claiming and bearing them."
"The thorn in the cushion of the editorial chair […,] it stings me now as I write."
"We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. […] It was only yesterday; but what a gulph between now and then? Then was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armour, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, ancient Britons, painted blue, and so forth—all these belong to the old period. […] But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. […] We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark."
"Certain it is that scandal is good brisk talk, whereas praise of one's neighbour is by no means lively hearing. An acquaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and served with mustard and cayenne pepper, excites the appetite; whereas a slice of cold friend with currant jelly is but a sickly, unrelishing meat."
"At that comfortable tavern on Pontchartrain, we had a ' than which a better was never eaten at : and not the least headache in the morning, I give you my word: on the contrary, you only wake with a sweet refreshing thirst for claret and water."
"So they pass away: friends, kindred, the dearest-loved, grown people, aged, infants. As we go on the down-hill journey, the mile-stones are grave-stones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone."
"Those who are gone, you have. Those who departed loving you, love you still; and you love them always. They are not really gone, those dear hearts and true; they are only gone into the next room: and you will presently get up and follow them, and yonder door will close upon you, and you will no more be seen."
"The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new."
"He had many fine qualities, no guile or malice against any mortal; a big mass of a soul, but not strong in proportion; a beautiful vein of genius lay struggling about in him. Nobody in our day wrote, I should say, with such perfection of style. I predict of his books very much as you do. Poor Thackeray!—adieu! adieu!"
"Thackeray is everybody's past — is everybody's youth. Forgotten friends flit about the passages of dreamy colleges and unremembered clubs; we hear fragments of unfinished conversations, we see faces without names for an instant, fixed forever in some trivial grimace: we smell the strong smell of social cliques now quite incongruous to us; and there stir in all the little rooms at once the hundred ghosts of oneself."
"Thackeray's Philip, which I thought excellent, an exquisite combination of pathos and irony and genuine comedy. He is worlds beyond Dickens in the power of direct and accurate observation."
"(“Chip Delany says that science fiction is as much a way of "reading" as it is a way of writing, and learn that. What is it that we have to learn?”) That's true for realism, too. You have to learn how to read Jane Austen. We have to learn how to read realistic fiction. A lot of people never do. Some of them, our fantasy readers, don't know how to read Thackeray, or any novels. They don't know what to expect, they don't know what the rewards are supposed to be."
"Over and outside his fancy, which was the gift which made him so remarkable,—a certain feminine softness was the most remarkable trait about him. To give some immediate pleasure was the great delight of his life,—a sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a man, a compliment to a woman. His charity was overflowing. His generosity excessive... Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic, but whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully inflicting a wound."
"Bees that hae honey in their mouths, hae stings in their tales."