Цитаты из книги Never Bet the Devil Your Head

– but, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of wickedness in.

Когда растеряешься, приходится хмурить брови и принимать суровый вид, чтобы не выглядеть совсем дураком.

I felt particularly puzzled, and when a man is particularly puzzled he must knit his brows and look savage, or else he is pretty sure to look like a fool.

Before I had time to make any remark, however, upon so singular a circumstance, he interrupted me with a second «ahem!». To this observation I was not immediately prepared to reply. The fact is, remarks of this laconic nature are nearly unanswerable.

He insisted upon leaping the stile, and said he could cut a pigeon-wing over it in the air. Now this, conscientiously speaking, I did not think he could do. The best pigeon-winger over all kinds of style was my friend Mr. Carlyle, and as I knew he could not do it, I would not believe that it could be done by Toby Dammit.

The truth is, there was something in the air with which Mr. Dammit was wont to give utterance to his offensive expression – something in his manner of enunciation – which at first interested, and afterwards made me very uneasy – something which, for want of a more definite term at present, I must be permitted to call queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical.

In short, it has been shown that no man can sit down to write without a very profound design. Thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there – that is to say, it is somewhere – and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light,

Every fiction should have a moral; and, what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every fiction has.

Мир вертится справа налево, и если пороть дитя слева направо, ничего хорошего из этого не выйдет. Каждый удар в нужном направлении выколачивает из дитяти дурные наклонности, а отсюда следует, что порка в противоположном направлении, наоборот, вколачивает в него определенную порцию зла.

Тайна заставляет человека думать — а это вредно для здоровья.

...дети — что твои свиные отбивные или нынешние оливы из Греции — чем больше их бьешь, тем лучше они становятся

Впечатление от наших речей, как я замечаю, далеко не всегда пропорционально их смыслу в наших глазах.

Впрочем, все это немало меня сердило, как сердят меня любые обстоятельства, которых я не понимаю. Тайна заставляет человека думать - а это вредно для здоровья.

Впечатление от наших речей, как я замечаю, далеко не всегда пропорционально их смыслу в наших глазах.