Random Utterances

Because what she disliked in men was not their eroticism, but their assumption that women had none. Which left women with nothing to be but housemaids.

—Marian Engel | Bear | p. 96

Trelawny wanted to find a poet, to know a poet, because he couldn’t be one, and he was romantic about poets.

—Marian Engel | Bear | p. 77

She wondered if he, like herself, visualized transformations, waking every morning expecting to be a prince, disappointed still to be a bear.

—Marian Engel | Bear | p. 75

‘I love you, bear,’ she said.

—Marian Engel | Bear | p. 55

It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.

—Jerome K. Jerome | Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | “On Memory.” | p. 91

Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and ‘Forward!’ is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building; it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life thinking of what might have been and forgetting the may be that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.

—Jerome K. Jerome | Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | “On Memory.” | p. 88

Ah! we may talk sentiment as much as we like, but the stomach is the real seat of happiness in this world. The kitchen is the chief temple wherein we worship, its roaring fire is our vestal flame, and the cook is our great high-priest. He is a mighty magician and a kindly one. He soothes away all sorrow and care. He drives forth all enmity, gladdens all love. Our God is great and the cook is his prophet. Let us eat, drink, and be merry.

—Jerome K. Jerome | Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | “On Eating and Drinking.” | p. 71

Even nowadays, though, the thirstiness of mankind is something supernatural. We are forever drinking on one excuse or another. A man never feels comfortable unless he has a glass before him. We drink before meals, and with meals, and after meals. We drink when we meet a friend, also when we part from a friend. We drink when we are talking, when we are reading, and when we are thinking. We drink one another’s healths and spoil our own. We drink the queen, and the army, and the ladies, and everybody else that is drinkable; and I believe if the supply ran short we should drink our mothers-in-law.

—Jerome K. Jerome | Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | “On Eating and Drinking.” | p. 69-70

Foolish people—when I say ‘foolish people’ in this contemptuous way I mean people who entertain different opinions to mine. If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do—foolish people, I say, then, who have never experienced much of either, will tell you that mental distress is far more agonizing than bodily.

—Jerome K. Jerome | Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow | “On Eating and Drinking.” | p. 67

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs, and explosions, and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices—to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

—The Twilight Zone | Season 1 | “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”