David > Recent Status Updates

“Love is many things, none of them logical.”

Austenian zinger: "They sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanour, and a general want of understanding."

“Well-bred English people never have imagination, Bunter.”

“Certainly not, my lord. I meant nothing disparaging.”

"When George gave his opinion, he thought he was just contradicting.”

“To be sure,” said the Dowager, “when you flatly deny everything a person says it does sound like contradiction to the uninitiated."

"Victory over barbarians. Employment of barbarians. Alliance with barbarians. Conquest by barbarians. That is the great destiny of Empire."

"There are crowds who do not care to revolt; but there are no crowds who do not like someone else to do it for them; a fact which the safest oligarchs may be wise to learn."

"A madman has only one merit and last link with God. A madman is always logical."

"The finding and fighting of positive evil is the beginning of all fun—and even of all farce."

"The next best thing to really loving a fellow creature is really hating him: especially when he is a poorer man separated from you otherwise by mere social stiffness. The desire to murder him is at least an acknowledgment that he is alive."

"A vast proportion of the real Americans are among the most courteous, intelligent, self-respecting people in the world. Some attribute this to the fact that a vast proportion of the real Americans are Irishmen."

"There is no great harm in the theorist who makes up a new theory to fit a new event. But the theorist who starts with a false theory and then sees everything as making it come true is the most dangerous enemy of human reason."

"The people who write to newspapers are, it may be supposed, a small, eccentric body, like most of those that sway a modern state."

"He had a great talent for one of the worst tricks of modern journalism, the trick of dismissing the important part of a question as if it could wait, and appearing to get to business on the unimportant part of it. Thus, he would say, 'Whatever we may think of the rights and wrongs of the vivisection of pauper children, we shall all agree that it should only be done, in any event, by fully qualified practitioners.'"

"I haven't been happy, Hump, but I have had a jolly time."

"But Mr. Bullrose was petty. Every really practical tyrant must be petty."

"Has it ever occurred to you," asked Paynter, "that perhaps the men who have never committed murder are a varied and very extraordinary set? Perhaps every plain man's life holds the real mystery, the secret of sins avoided."

"He could always get on with viceroys and Cabinet Ministers and all the great men responsible for great departments, and talk to each of them on his own subject, on the branch of study with which he was most seriously concerned. Thus he could converse with the Minister for War about silkworms, with the Minister of Education about detective stories, with the Minister of Labor about Limoges enamel..."

"Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority."

"There is such a thing as the coarseness of a gentleman. And it is the most horrible thing in humanity."

"Business men are all simple-minded, and have therefore that degree of communion with fanatics."

'Shaving, sir?' inquired that artist from inside his shop.

'War!' replied Wayne, standing on the threshold.

"The maiden who laughs with happy heart, holy Inanna, how she was weeping! Her brother, Young Hero Utu, did not help her in this matter."

Siblings, am I right?

“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face?"

"Bad is so bad, that we cannot but think good an accident; good is so good, that we feel certain that evil could be explained."

"Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity."

"Both Death and Life [the gods] did establish, but the day of Death they do not disclose."

"Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?"

"Always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?"