19 quotes
That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile — that we don't care a damn how you behave yourself.
Trent's Own Case (1936)
Is it a cosmic law, d'you think, that conceited men's hats are always too small?
Trent Intervenes (1938)
Trent read and re-read the pitiful message [a suicide note], so full of the awful egotism of grief.
Trent Intervenes (1938)
When their lordships asked Bacon How many bribes he had taken He had at least the grace To get very red in the face.
What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive.
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)
And as for that low, velvety voice of hers, if she asked me to murder my best friend I should have to do it on the spot.
Trent Intervenes (1938)
John Stuart Mill,
By a mighty effort of will,
Overcame his natural bonhomie
And wrote "Principles of Political Economy."
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)
Sir Christopher Wren
Said, "I am going to dine with some men.
If anyone calls
Say I am designing St. Paul's."
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)
I can only say that you must have totally renounced all trust in the operations of the human reason; an attitude which, while it is bad Christianity and also infernal nonsense, is oddly enough bad Positivism too, unless I misunderstand that system.
Trent's Last Case (1912)
George the Third
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
Clerihews: More Biography (1929)
I know, if anyone does — all research workers know — how much is missed that really matters because reports have to be written in officialese. They have to be, because a lot of us can't take anything seriously unless you make it dull for them.
Trent's Own Case (1936)
[S]he had a singular spaciousness of mind in which nothing little or mean could live.
Trent Intervenes (1938)
Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)
He was less afraid of gentlemen than of most other kinds of men; for instinct told him that, however detestable a gentleman's personal character might be, he was usually not inclined to be censorious or even inquisitive about the conduct of his fellow-creatures.
Trent's Own Case (1936)
It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers,
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)
Lord Southrop was, of course, eccentric in his views; and you never knew — here the housekeeper, with a despondent head-shake, paused, leaving unspoken the suggestion that a man who did not think or behave like other people might go mad at any moment.
Trent Intervenes (1938)
There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings.
Trent's Own Case (1936)
Edward the Confessor
Slept under the dresser.
When that began to pall,
He slept in the hall.
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)
The art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about maps,
But Biography is about chaps.
Clerihews: Biography for Beginners (1905)