Read through the most famous quotes by topic #comment
What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning." "It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly. "Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple." "You do not. And I think it looks rather nice." He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy." "That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling. "The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie. ↗
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else doing it wrong, without commenting. ↗
It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. ↗
Doctor MacKenzie says "Sometimes I think the Victorians had the right idea. When you lost a family member back then you were suppose to be in full mourning, dress in nothing but black, for a whole year. Then you went into something they called 'half mourning' for another full year, adn during those two years, you were pretty much expected to have emotional breakdowns, you could do it whenever you felt you needed to, and everybody would support you. Now?, A month after a tragedy, maybe two, and you're expected to be all better-or down pills so you can pretend you are. ↗
Marianne would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with an head-ache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment; giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough! ↗
We will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess. ↗
To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone. ↗
