Джером Клапка Джером цитаты

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„Безделье, как и поцелуи, чтобы быть сладкими, должно быть украденным.“

„Руки доброй женщины, обвившиеся вокруг шеи мужчины, — это спасательный круг, брошенный ему судьбой с неба.“

„Мы заучили кучу гладких фраз о преступности войны и благодарим Бога за то, что живем в наше мирное торговое время и можем всю нашу мысль и энергию посвящать взаимному ограблению и надувательству.“

„Собака — очень необычное создание; она никогда не пристает с расспросами, какое у тебя настроение, ее не интересует, богат ты или беден, глуп или умен, грешник или святой. Ты ее друг. Ей этого достаточно.“

„Бедность не порок. Будь она пороком, её не стыдились бы.“

„Философия не имеет никакого отношения к супружеской жизни. Здесь требуется быть полезным, а не выдающимся человеком. В браке мозг не учитывается; на него нет спроса, нет надлежащей оценки. Жены мерят нас на свой аршин, причем блеск ума совсем не принимается в расчет.“

„Мы делаем вид, что всякая женщина порядочна, что всякий мужчина честен — до тех пор, пока они не вынуждают нас, вопреки нашему желанию, обратить внимание на то, что это не так. Тогда мы очень на них сердимся и объясняем им, что такие грешники, как они, нам, людям безупречным, не компания.“

„Вы просто не умеете дышать, — как-то объяснял ей наш жилец с третьего этажа, добросердечный молодой человек,
 — воздух не надо глотать, надо его просто держать внутри. Вдохните поглубже и закройте рот; не бойтесь; не выдыхайте, пока он не подействует, — он должен подействовать“

„Животные тоже любят забавляться и играть, пока они молоды, а человек готов заниматься этим всю жизнь;он — единственное животное, которое скачет, прыгает и вертится и по достижении своей зрелости.“

„Обычно ветер на реке упорно дует вам навстречу, в какую бы сторону вы ни плыли.
Он дует вам навстречу поутру, когда вы отчаливаете от берега, и вы целый день гребете,
подбадривая себя предвкушением того, как приятно будет возвращаться под парусом.
Но к вечеру его направление меняется, и вам ничего не остается, как снова грести против ветра до самого дома.Но если вы забыли взять с собой парус, тут уж ветер будет попутным в оба конца. Что поделаешь! Наш мир - это юдоль скорбей, и человек создан, чтобы страдать, как солнце, чтобы светить.“

„Смех и вздох, поцелуй и прощание — вот и вся наша жизнь.“

„… до трёх месяцев все дети совершенно одинаковы. Пожалуй, вы отличите мальчика от девочки и белое христианское дитя от чернокожего язычника, но чтоб можно было ткнуть пальцем в голого младенца и сказать: это Смит, а это Джонс, — чепуха! Разденьте их, заверните в одеяло, и, бьюсь об какой хотите заклад, вы никогда в жизни не скажете, кто из них чей.“

„… в возрасте одного года и семи месяцев он плакал, когда бабушка не позволяла ему кормить её с ложки, а в три с половиной года его полуживым выудили из пожарной бочки, куда он залез, чтобы научить лягушку плавать.“

„Большинство из нас похожи на того петуха, который воображал, что солнце встаёт каждое утро единственно для того, чтобы послушать, как он поёт.“

„Честность — лучшая политика, если, конечно, вам не дарован талант убедительно лгать.“

„Моя жена — чудеснейшая женщина в мире, но у нее есть один недостаток: она верит всему, что ей говорят.“

„Мы пьём за здоровье друг друга и портим собственное здоровье.“

„Чтобы на Земле царили мир и покой, количество мальчиков и девочек должно быть равным.“

„Когда яркое пламя любви перестаёт мерцать, веселее горит огонёк привязанности; его-то легко поддерживать изо дня в день и даже усиливать по мере того, как приближается холодная смерть.“

„Память подобна населённому нечистой силой дому, в стенах которого постоянно раздаётся эхо от невидимых шагов. В разбитых окнах мелькают тени умерших, а рядом с ними — печальные призраки нашего былого «я.»“

„Вы строите из себя дурака, Николас Снайдерс. Над вами все смеются.“

„Нет на свете собаки нежнее и ласковее бульдога. Но на вид этого не скажешь. Мягкость его нрава отнюдь не бросается в глаза случайному наблюдателю. Бульдог напоминает того джентльмена, о котором говорится в популярном стишке:
* Он парень что надо, но не с первого взгляда!
Сначала понять, раскусить его надо!“

„Я полагаю, что, если бы перенести на необитаемый остров двух женщин, они стали бы каждый день спорить о том, какие именно из морских раковин и птичьих яиц больше годятся для украшений, и каждый месяц придумывали бы новый фасон для фиговых листьев.“

„Когда он не играл в теннис, не тренировался, не читал про теннис, он говорил о теннисе. В те времена кумиром теннисистов был Реншоу, и <он> до такой степени надоел мне этим Реншоу, что в моей душе созрела преступное желание как-нибудь исподтишка убить Реншоу и предать его останки земле.“

„Тут не хватает ссылок первоисточники цитат.“

„Он парень что надо, но не с первого взгляда!
Сначала понять, раскусить его надо!“

„Дело в том, что когда вы еще очень, очень молоды, вам кажется, что лето состоит из одних только солнечных дней и лунных ночей, что ветер не бывает пронизывающим и дует всегда с запада, а розы согласны цвести где угодно. Но с годами устаешь дожидаться, когда сквозь тучи прорежется луч солнца. А потому закрываешь двери, заходишь в дом и, притулившись у огня, гадаешь, почему ветер вечно дует с востока и почему ты давно бросил попытки вырастить розы.“

„Потом, прелестная принцесса, ведь как-никак, а вы все-таки живете в великолепном дворце, имеете множество блестящих драгоценностей и пышных нарядов…“

„В те времена даже в окрестностях Плейстовских болот попадались живописные уголки.
То здесь, то там склоняли свои ветви к земле развесистые вязы. Еще стояли утопающие в зелени старинные постоялые дворы, со всех сторон окруженные безобразными домами, и,
если особенно не вертеться, то, сидя под дубом и потягивая пивко из кружечки, ты сразу же забывал, что за оградой тянутся унылые улицы и дымят черные трубы.“

“How dull, how impossible life would be without dreams — waking dreams, I mean — the dreams that we call "castles in the air," built by the kindly hands of Hope! Were it not for the mirage of the oasis, drawing his footsteps ever onward, the weary traveler would lie down in the desert sand and die. It is the mirage of distant success, of happiness that, like the bunch of carrots fastened an inch beyond the donkey's nose, seems always just within our reach, if only we will gallop fast enough, that makes us run so eagerly along the road of Life.”

“It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.”

“Swearing relieves the feelings—that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.”

“We do not hate, nor grieve, nor joy, nor despair in our thirties like we did in our teens. Disappointment does not suggest suicide, and we quaff success without intoxication.”

“And how madly we did worship! And how sweet it was to worship! Ah, lad, cherish love's young dream while it lasts! You will know too soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was nothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is a wild, romantic misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of after-sorrows. When you have lost her—when the light is gone out from your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror, even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair.”

“We drink one another's health and spoil our own.”

“You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the house-tops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice.”

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.”

“There are various ways of flattering, and, of course, you must adapt your style to your subject. Some people like it laid on with a trowel, and this requires very little art. With sensible persons, however, it needs to be done very delicately, and more by suggestion than actual words. A good many like it wrapped up in the form of an insult, as—"Oh, you are a perfect fool, you are. You would give your last sixpence to the first hungry-looking beggar you met;" while others will swallow it only when administered through the medium of a third person, so that if C wishes to get at an A of this sort, he must confide to A's particular friend B that he thinks A a splendid fellow, and beg him, B, not to mention it, especially to A. Be careful that B is a reliable man, though, otherwise he won't.”

“It seems so sad to see the little dirt-grimed brats try to play in the noisy courts and muddy streets. Poor little uncared-for, unwanted human atoms, they are not children. Children are bright-eyed, chubby, and shy. These are dingy, screeching elves, their tiny faces seared and withered, their baby laughter cracked and hoarse.”

“A poor gasping, blushing creature, with trembling knees and twitching hands, is a painful sight to every one, and if it cannot cure itself, the sooner it goes and hangs itself the better.”

“The human mind can no more produce an original thought than a tree can bear an original fruit. As well might one cry for an original note in music as expect an original idea from a human brain.
One wishes our friends, the critics, would grasp this simple truth, and leave off clamoring for the impossible, and being shocked because they do not get it.”

“We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone. Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the Universe.”

“Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature.”

“There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it."”

“No, what was sad in his case was that he, who didn’t care for carved oak, should have his drawing-room panelled with it, while people who do care for it have to pay enormous prices to get it. It seems to be the rule of this world. Each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people have what he does want.”

“in the unliterary grammar of life, where the future tense stands first, and the past is formed, not from the indefinite, but from the present indicative, "to have been" is "to be."”

“Our trouble is sore indeed when you turn away and will not comfort us. How long the dawn seems coming when we cannot sleep! Oh! those hideous nights when we toss and turn in fever and pain, when we lie, like living men among the dead, staring out into the dark hours that drift so slowly between us and the light. And oh! those still more hideous nights when we sit by another in pain, when the low fire startles us every now and then with a falling cinder, and the tick of the clock seems a hammer beating out the life that we are watching.”

“If all the wisdom of the world and all its art—all the spoils that it has won from nature, all the fire that it has snatched from heaven—were gathered together and divided into heaps, and we could point and say, for instance, these mighty truths were flashed forth in the brilliant salon amid the ripple of light laughter and the sparkle of bright eyes; and this deep knowledge was dug up in the quiet study, where the bust of Pallas looks serenely down on the leather-scented shelves; and this heap belongs to the crowded street; and that to the daisied field—the heap that would tower up high above the rest as a mountain above hills would be the one at which we should look up and say: this noblest pile of all—these glorious paintings and this wondrous music, these trumpet words, these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they were forged and fashioned amid misery and pain in the sordid squalor of the city garret. There, from their eyries, while the world heaved and throbbed below, the kings of men sent forth their eagle thoughts to wing their flight through the ages. There, where the sunlight streaming through the broken panes fell on rotting boards and crumbling walls; there, from their lofty thrones, those rag-clothed Joves have hurled their thunderbolts and shaken, before now, the earth to its foundations.”

“I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished—not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.”

“The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.”

“Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God.”

“Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread. Without ambitious people the world would never get up. They are busybodies who are about early in the morning, hammering, shouting, and rattling the fire-irons, and rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed.”

“The point where he does resemble his ideal is in his faithfulness. I am fully prepared to allow the shy young man that virtue: he is constant in his love. But the reason is not far to seek. The fact is it exhausts all his stock of courage to look one woman in the face, and it would be simply impossible for him to go through the ordeal with a second. He stands in far too much dread of the whole female sex to want to go gadding about with many of them. One is quite enough for him.”

“It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.”

“When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head—the other man's head, I mean—then that proved that his—the first fellow's—girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other fellow's—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his girl—not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the—Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism.”

“We take all things in a minor key as we grow older. There are few majestic passages in the later acts of life's opera. Ambition takes a less ambitious aim. Honor becomes more reasonable and conveniently adapts itself to circumstances. And love—love dies. "Irreverence for the dreams of youth" soon creeps like a killing frost upon our hearts. The tender shoots and the expanding flowers are nipped and withered, and of a vine that yearned to stretch its tendrils round the world there is left but a sapless stump”

“It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear trousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes? What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of his friends round about to sneer him. Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.”

“I am afraid, dear Edwin and Angelina, you expect too much from love. You think there is enough of your little hearts to feed this fierce, devouring passion for all your long lives. Ah, young folk! don't rely too much upon that unsteady flicker. It will dwindle and dwindle as the months roll on, and there is no replenishing the fuel. You will watch it die out in anger and disappointment. To each it will seem that it is the other who is growing colder. Edwin sees with bitterness that Angelina no longer runs to the gate to meet him, all smiles and blushes; and when he has a cough now she doesn't begin to cry and, putting her arms round his neck, say that she cannot live without him. The most she will probably do is to suggest a lozenge, and even that in a tone implying that it is the noise more than anything else she is anxious to get rid of.”