Castle Rackrent quotes

Having, out of friendship for the family, upon whose estate, praised be Heaven! I and mine have lived rent-free time out of mind, voluntarily undertaken to publish the Memoirs of the Rackrent Family, I think it my duty to say a few words, in the first place, concerning myself.

My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the family I have always been known by no other than “honest Thady,”—afterwards, in the time of Sir Murtagh, deceased, I remember to hear them calling me “old Thady,” and now I’ve come to “poor Thady”;

roads, lanes, bogs, wells, ponds, eel-wires, orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants, gravelpits, sandpits, dunghills, and nuisances, everything upon the face of the earth furnished him good matter for a suit.

He used to boast that he had a lawsuit for every letter in the alphabet.

How I used to wonder to see Sir Murtagh in the midst of the papers in his office! Why, he could hardly turn about for them.

I made bold to shrug my shoulders once in his presence, and thanked my stars I was not born a gentleman to so much toil and trouble; but Sir Murtagh took me up short with his old proverb, “learning is better than house or land.”

Out of forty-nine suits which he had, he never lost one but seventeen;

the rest he gained with costs, double costs, treble costs sometimes; but even that did not pay. He was a very learned man in the law, and had the character of it;

but things were ordered otherwise—for the best to be sure. He dug up a fairy-mount against my advice, and had no luck afterwards.

Though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters.

I warned him that I heard the very Banshee that my grandfather heard under Sir Patrick’s window a few days before his death.

“My dear,” says he, “you liked it well enough before we were married, and why not now?” “My dear,” said she, “I never smelt it, or I assure you I should never have prevailed upon myself to marry you.”

“My dear, I am sorry you did not smell it, but we can’t help that now,” returned my master, without putting himself in a passion, or going out of his way, but just fair and easy helped himself to another glass, and drank it off to her good health.

All this the butler told me, who was going backwards and forwards unnoticed with the jug, and hot water, and sugar, and all he thought wanting.

and when he came out I wiped down the window-seat with my wig, and bade him a good morrow as kindly as I could, seeing he was in trouble, though he strove and thought to hide it from me.

“This window is all racked and tattered,” says I, “and it’s what I’m striving to mend.”

“It is all racked and tattered, plain enough,” says he, “and never mind mending it, honest old Thady,” says he; “it will do well enough for you and I, and that’s all the company we shall have left in the house by and by.”

“This window is all racked and tattered,” says I, “and it’s what I’m striving to mend.”

“It is all racked and tattered, plain enough,” says he, “and never mind mending it, honest old Thady,” says he; “it will do well enough for you and I, and that’s all the company we shall have left in the house by and by.”

“I’m sorry to see your honour so low this morning,” says I; “but you’ll be better after taking your breakfast.”