 | The fiend's delight |  |
6. LAUGHORISMS.
.... When a favourite dog has an
incurable pain, you “put him out of his misery”
with a bullet or an axe. A favourite child similarly
afflicted is preserved as long as possible, in torment.
I do not say that this is not right; I claim only
that it is not consistent. There are two sorts of
kindness; one for dogs, and another for children.
A very dear friend, wallowing about in the red
mud of a battle-field, once asked me for some of
the dog sort. I suspect, if no one had been
looking, he would have got it.
.... It is to be feared that to most
men the sky is but a concave mirror, showing nothing
behind, and in looking into which they see only
their own distorted images, like the reflection of a
face in a spoon. Hence it needs not surprise that
they are not very devout worshippers; it is a great
wonder they do not openly scoff.
.... The influence of climate upon
civilization has been more exhaustively treated
is that some countries that have so much climate
have no civilization.
.... Whoso shall insist upon holding
your attention while he expounds to you things
that you have always thriven without knowing
resembles one who should go about with a
hammer, cracking nuts upon other people's heads
and eating the kernels himself.
.... There are but two kinds of tem
porary insanity, and each has but a single symptom.
The one was discovered by a coroner, the other by
a lawyer. The one induces you to kill yourself
when you are unwell of life; the other persuades
you to kill somebody else when you are fatigued of
seeing him about.
.... People who honour their fathers
and their mothers have the comforting promise
that their days shall be long in the land. They
are not sufficiently numerous to make the life
assurance companies think it worth their while to
offer them special rates.
.... There are people who dislike to
die, for apparently no better reason than that there
but it must be confessed that the fewer there are
of these untasted sweets, the more loth are they to
leave them.
.... Men ought to sin less in petty
details, and more in the lump; that they might the
more conveniently be brought to repentance when
they are ready. They should imitate the touching
solicitude of the lady for the burglar, whom she
spares much trouble by keeping her jewels well
together in a box.
.... I once knew a man who made
me a map of the opposite hemisphere of the moon.
He was crazy. I knew another who taught me
what country lay upon the other side of the grave.
He was a most acute thinker—as he had need
to be.
.... Those who are horrified at Mr.
Darwin's theory, may comfort themselves with the
assurance that, if we are descended from the ape,
we have not descended so far as to preclude all hope
of return.
.... There is more poison in apho
risms than in painted candy; but it is of a less
seductive kind.
.... If it were as easy to invent a
credible falsehood as it is to believe one, we should
have little else in print. The mechanical construction
of a falsehood is a matter of the gravest
import.
.... There is just as much true
pleasure in walloping one's own wife as in the sinful
enjoyment of another man's right. Heaven gives
to each man a wife, and intends that he shall cleave
to her alone. To cleave is either to “split” or to
“stick.” To cleave to your wife is to split her
with a stick.
.... A strong mind is more easily
impressed than a weak one: you shall not as readily
convince a fool that you are a philosopher, as a
philosopher that you are a fool.
.... In our intercourse with men,
their national peculiarities and customs are entitled
to consideration. In addressing the common
Frenchman take off your hat; in addressing the
common Irishman make him take off his.
.... It is nearly always untrue to
say of a man that he wishes to leave a great
property behind him when he dies. Usually he
would like to take it along.
.... Benevolence is as purely selfish
as greed. No one would do a benevolent action if
he knew it would entail remorse.
.... If cleanliness is next to godli
ness, it is a matter of unceasing wonder that,
having gone to the extreme limit of the former, so
many people manage to stop short exactly at the
line of demarcation.
.... Most people have no more
definite idea of liberty than that it consists in being
compelled by law to do as they like.
.... Every man is at heart a brute,
and the greatest injury you can put upon any one
is to provoke him into displaying his nature. No
gentleman ever forgives the man who makes him
let out his beast.
.... The Psalmist never saw the
seed of the righteous begging bread. In our day
they sometimes request pennies for keeping the
street-crossings in order.
.... When two wholly irreconcil
able propositions are presented to the mind, the
safest way is to thank Heaven that we are not like
the unreasoning brutes, and believe both.
.... If every malefactor in the
church were known by his face it would be necessary
to prohibit the secular tongue from crying
“stop thief.” Otherwise the church bells could
not be heard of a pleasant Sunday.
.... Truth is more deceptive than
falsehood, because it is commonly employed by
those from whom we do not expect it, and so passes
for what it is not.
.... “If people only knew how
foolish it is” to take their wine with a dash of
prussic acid, it is probable that they would—prefer
to take it with that addition.
.... “A man's honour,” says a
philosopher, “is the best protection he can have.”
Then most men might find a heartless oppressor in
the predatory oyster.
.... The canary gets his name from
the dog, an animal whom he looks down upon.
We get a good many worse things than names
from those beneath us; and they give us a bad
name too.
.... Faith is the best evidence in
the world; it reconciles contradictions and proves
impossibilities. It is wonderfully developed in the
blind.
.... He who undertakes an “Ac
count of Idiots in All Ages” will find himself committed
to the task of compiling most known
biographies. Some future publisher will affix a
life of the compiler.
.... Gratitude is regarded as a
precious virtue, because tendered as a fair equivalent
for any conceivable service.
.... A bad marriage is like an
electric machine: it makes you dance, but you
can't let go.
.... The symbol of Charity should
be a circle. It usually ends exactly where it begins
—at home.
.... Most people redeem a promise
as an angler takes in a trout; by first playing it
with a good deal of line.
.... It is a grave mistake to sup
pose defaulters have no consciences. Some of
them have been known, under favourable circumstances,
to restore as much as ten per cent. of their
plunder.
.... There is nothing so progres
sive as grief, and nothing so infectious as progress.
I have seen an acre of cemetery infected
by a single innovation in spelling cut upon a
tombstone.
.... It is wicked to cheat on Sun
day. The law recognises this truth, and shuts up
the shops.
.... In the infancy of our language
to be “foolish” signified to be affectionate; to be
“fond” was to be silly. We have altered that
now: to be “foolish” is to be silly, to be “fond”
is to be affectionate. But that the change could
ever have been made is significant.
.... If you meet a man on the
narrow crossing of a muddy street, stand quite
still. He will turn out and go round you, bowing
his apologies. It is courtesy to accept them.
.... If every hypocrite in the
United States were to break his leg at noon to-day,
the country might be successfully invaded at one
o'clock by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.
.... To Dogmatism the Spirit of
Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil; and to
pictures of the latter it has appended a tail, to
represent the note of interrogation.
.... We speak of the affections as
originating in instinct. This is a miserable subterfuge
to shift the obloquy from the judgement.
.... What we call decency is cus
tom; what we term indecency is merely customary.
.... The noblest pursuit of Man is
the pursuit of Woman.
.... “Immoral” is the solemn
judgement of the stalled ox upon the sun-inspired
lamb.
| The fiend's delight | |