Quotes
You will not have forgotten that it was a maxim with Foxey — our revered father, gentlemen — "Always suspect everybody." That's the maxim to go through life with!
Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.
The dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it.
I used to sit, think, think, thinking, till I felt as lonesome as a kitten in a wash–house copper with the lid on.
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?
p. 156
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
Captain Littlepage had overset his mind with too much reading.
Great times call for great men. There are unknown heroes who are modest, with none of the historical glamour of a Napoleon. If you analysed their character you would find that it eclipsed even the glory of Alexander the Great. Today you can meet in the streets of Prague a shabbily dressed man who is not even himself aware of his significance in the history of the great new era. He goes modestly on his way, without bothering anyone. Nor is he bothered by journalists asking for an interview. If you asked him his name he would answer you simply and unassumingly: 'I am Švejk….'
In a democracy ...someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.
p. 298
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be!
Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.
