Essayists From England

"The world is a great leveller, and every year brings with it certain modifying influences. I like a man to be his age. Twenty-one is not an age I am very partial to: it is omniscient and exorbitant and cruel; but I like a youth of twenty-one none the less. Forty makes better company: when a man knows how little he knows, and how little life holds for him, and is yet unsubdued."

"I wonder that affectionate parents can ever give their consent to their children's marriage at all. I can understand a father having no particular objection to his son's wife, and a mother to her daughter's husband; but how a father can ever even tolerate his daughter's husband or a mother the wife of her son, that is beyond my imagination."

"When it comes to analysing the pleasures of life, the privilege of approving and disapproving in conversation must be ranked very high, and reading aloud makes it so very harmless an amusement, since no talebearing is involved."

"She doesn't love you because of anything — she loves. She doesn't care whether you are handsome or ugly, or old or young, or cruel or kind, or strong or weak, or conceited Or humble, whether you drop your h's, or have nothing in the bank — those things are beside the mark, because she loves."

"The art of life...is to show your hand. There is no diplomacy like candour. You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception."

""Lotus-eating would give you a terrible stomachache," I said, "wouldn't it?" And the plucky little creature had the hardihood to reply, "I hope so." What can you do with people like this? and England is full of them. Suspicion of happiness is in our blood."

"This little book...is just a garland of good or enkindling poetry and prose fitted to urge folk into the open air...with perhaps a phrase or two for the feet to step to and the mind to brood on when the rest is over."

"I hate to be reminded of the passage of time, and in a garden of flowers one can never escape from it. It is one of the charms of a garden of grass and evergreens, that there for a while one is allowed to hug the illusion that time tarries."

"I don't want to give it to you, so please take it quickly and hide it, or I shall ask for it back. It is a very sordid feeling, I admit; but if you also had the collector's temperament you would know that to give away anything is nearly an impossibility, and to give away anything without regretting it is quite an impossibility."

"There are moments when one is more ashamed of what is called culture than any one can ever be of ignorance."

"I will admit to feeling exceedingly proud when any cat has singled me out for notice; for, of course, every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room. That is part of their deadly fascination."

"The mere fact of never having a holiday is not in itself distressing. Holidays often are overrated disturbances of routine, costly and uncomfortable, and they usually need another holiday to correct their ravages."

"I see that the pigeon-holes of Fleet Street must be full of these anticipatory articles which only need occasional revision to date to be all ready when the scythe is finally sharpened. To meet an editor must be for a thoughtful celebrity as chilling as the spectacle of the mummy at the Egyptian banquet."

"The art of life...is to be thought odd. Everything will then be permitted to you."

"Libraries...he does not much esteem. People should own their books, he holds ; but that, of course, is a counsel of perfection, or would be were it not for the multitude of reprints that are now to be had at the price of a cigar."

"What can become of book-hunting...if everything is reprinted in uniform binding for a shilling or sixpence?"

"It was a dull day for English readers (I think) when the description of the person was first considered unnecessary. We rarely get it now."

"Apart from the necessity of replenishing his stock by attending sales and buying books; the wearing task of looking narrowly at larcenous fellow-creatures; the pangs that it must cost him to sell the books that he wants to keep; and the attacks made upon his tenderer feelings by unfortunate impoverished creatures with worthless books to sell; apart from these drawbacks, the life of a second-hand bookseller seems to me a happy one. I could myself lead it with considerable contentment."

"It was Henri Taine, I think, who said that there was no volume he could not compress into a chapter, and no chapter that would not go into a sentence. Dr. Giles has carried out Taine's thrasonical brag. There is no Chinese lifetime, however crowded and illustrious, that he cannot pack into a paragraph or a page."

"I have come to the conclusion that the golfing temperament is essentially aristocratic— a feudal inheritance — the property exclusively of those who can see nothing absurd or even degrading in the spectacle of powerful frivolous men being followed by boys of burden."

"The crying need for the moment in this country, as in America, is a gospel of poverty to cope with the gospel of riches that is vitiating society."

"A second-hand bookseller, I found, may read much in his time, but he cannot read continuously."

"The smell of autumnal woods, as well as of coffee roasting in the towns, is among the few things that the French arrange better than we."

"There can be no defence like elaborate courtesy."

"Poor G.K.C., his day is past— Now God will know the truth at last."

"I bade farewell to the May stars, and did one of the most adventurous things left to us — I went to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams. All the authors of the world cannot spoil those."

"As a child I had no doubts; but now? Take, for instance, telling the truth. I was brought up to believe that one should do that, and I knew a lie a mile off. But now I see that mendacity, or at any rate the suppression of one's real feelings and opinions, is the cement that binds society together."

"Fixed customs must be surrendered, lateness must become punctuality, cigarette ends must not burn the mantelpiece, one misses one's own China tea. The bathroom is too far and other people use it. There is no hook for the strop. In short, to be a really good guest and at ease under alien roofs it is necessary, I suspect, to have no home ties of one's own ; certainly to have no very tyrannical habits."

""What was that?" said Grandmamma, who is not really deaf, but when in a tight place likes to gain time by this harmless imposition."

""What I always wonder about Dickens," he said, "is how on earth did the man correct his proofs?" Because, as he went on to point out, between the time of writing and the time of correcting he must have thought of so many new descriptive touches, so many new creatures to add, so many new and adorable fantastic comments on life. How could he deny himself the joy of putting these in? — for there can be no pleasure like that of creation.”"

"His mind...with all its vigour and acumen, though naturally inclined to justice and courage, is about as capable of impartiality as a prize-fighter is capable of metaphysics."

""Well," I said, "I'm sorry if cheerfulness is so impracticable. It would be new, at any rate, and novelty is said to be a great thing." "Not in songs," replied Alf. "They don't want anything new in songs except the tune. They've all got to be about the same things for ever and ever.”"

"The initial difficulty...having been slowly overcome...all went very smoothly, and the family quickly dropped company manners and showed me what it really was. Not that the difference was very marked, but a difference of course there always is — company manners being for the most part a kind of sandpaper that removes the asperities (and occasionally the attractions) of personality."

"To Naomi's serene, sane mind the world has to be accepted as it is, and therefore she is always the same. Not that she considers everything perfect, but she has an instinctive realisation of the inevitability of imperfection which keeps her contented — or at any rate prevents querulous discontent."

"Not the least remarkable thing in this wonderful world in which we grope and have our being, is the amazing differences that can exist in the children of the same parents."

"The true Londoner cares no straw for sanitation. He thrives on ill conditions."

"Cynicism and self-esteem run through everything. Christian of course we never were, and never shall be, not even in adversity; but we are no longer in the least afraid of God."

"Unhappily in England just now,...the type of journalist who seems to have most readers is permitted to be the least sagacious and the least independent."

"So long as there are advertisements there cannot be absolutely free speech. It is not humanly possible."

"Virtue we still consider the best goal for others: but for ourselves, success. Success is the new god, and will be, I suppose, for some time yet, so zealously is the altar flame guarded."

"It was almost impossible for a book to carry no association for that swooping, pouncing brain. He either knew it, or knew of it, or had always wanted to know it."

"The time for second-hand book-shops...is after one's work, not during one's work."

"It is all as it should be if they were really friends once, for friends, in fact, belong to periods rather than to all time, although sentiment would have it otherwise. One is always changing a little, although of radical change there is almost none, and new friends are found in tune with each stage."

"Bachelors have many advantages, but they are all minor. Perhaps the greatest advantage they enjoy is that of still being able to follow an impulse; but even this rarely seems to give them all the pleasure that it would give many a man who has tasted restriction. Feeding on impulses can become as distasteful as feeding on jam roll."

""Do you think women ought to have the vote?" I asked him. "My mother says," he replied, "that all the clever women have it already." "Has she got it?" I asked. He grinned. "I should rather say she had," he answered."

"I could go on indefinitely thus, calling forth from their graves these hard-bitten sea dogs; but that is enough. It is literature in its way, is it not? Are there the same or kindred characters in the Navy to-day, one wonders. Let us hope so."

"Venice indeed imposes laziness. Even Americans doing Europe approach restfulness there. There is no hurrying a gondolier."

"Life is strangely suspicious and impatient of youth and candour and innocence and naïveté. Hardly does it perceive these exquisite qualities to exist than it rubs away their bloom with a rough finger. How often one longs for an arrested progress — for a little girl to go on being a little girl a little longer; for the perpetual kitten of our dreams! But no; the Creator is not that kind of artist."

"I never need to see any one twice to know them. My first impressions are always right. Sometimes I go back on my first impressions, but it is always a mistake to do so."

"I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them."