The Cunning Man

A Library goes on as far as thought can reach.

The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.

"Can you tell me the time of the last complete show?"

"You have the wrong number."

"Eh? Isn't this the Odeon?"

I decide to give a Burtonian answer.

"No, this is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Good-night."

But what ailed Little Eva St. Clair, in Uncle Tom's Cabin? What carried off Little Nell?...They have no clear symptoms, and seem to die of Ingrowing Virtue.

The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.

The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live.

Naked anger may sometimes be seen in priests of the Church of Rome, but the Church of England prefers the icy smile, the false bonhomie, the sword concealed in the palm-branch.

Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew.

When irony first makes itself known in a young man's life, it can be like his first experience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful thing which he does not know how to handle.

Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.

I knew that he prayed a great deal, of course for help in the examinations. But subsequent clinical experience has convinced me that God is not particularly interested in examinations, just as he won't be dragged into the Stock Market, or being a backer in show business.

Whoever declares a child to be "delicate" thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant.