Jerome K. Jerome quotes - page 2
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.
Jerome K. Jerome
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.
Jerome K. Jerome