Erewhon Revisited quotes

At this point he would shrug his shoulders, look mysterious, and thus say “alcoholic poisoning” even more effectively than if he had uttered the words themselves.

For a man’s tongue lies often in his shoulders.

Readers of my father’s book will remember that Chowbok had given a very different version when he had returned to his employer’s station; but Time and Distance afford cover under which falsehood can often do truth to death securely.

but he was a ready man, and knew that when people have taken any idea into their heads, a little confirmation will fix it.

A first idea is like a strong seedling; it will grow if it can.

In less time than it will have taken the reader to get through the last foregoing paragraphs, my father took up the cue furnished him by the second speaker.

It was Panky, not Hanky, who had given him the Musical Bank money.

Panky was the greater humbug of the two, for he would humbug even himself⁠—a thing, by the way, not very hard to do

; and yet he was the less successful humbug, for he could humbug no one who was worth humbugging—not for long. Hanky’s occasional frankness put people off their guard.

“You are more likely to wreck it yourself, Panky, by never doing so.

People like being deceived, but they like also to have an inkling of their own deception, and you never inkle them.

”

and I shall eat everything. It shall then transpire that the angel knew about the luggage, and what I was to have for breakfast, all the time, but wanted to give me the pleasure of finding things turn out better than I had expected.

Heaven would be a dull place without such occasional petty false alarms as these.

”

After a hundred years it may generally come down, though it will still be under a cloud. After two thousand years it may be mentioned in any society without holding up of hands in horror.

Our sense of moral guilt varies inversely as the squares of its distance in time and space from ourselves.

Not so with heroism; this loses no lustre through time and distance. Good is gold; it is rare, but it will not tarnish. Evil is like dirty water—plentiful and foul, but it will run itself clear of taint.

Not so with heroism; this loses no lustre through time and distance.

Good is gold; it is rare, but it will not tarnish. Evil is like dirty water⁠—plentiful and foul, but it will run itself clear of taint.

The Doctor having thus expatiated on his own opinions concerning heaven and hell, concluded by tilting at those which all right-minded people hold among ourselves. I shall adhere to my determination not to reproduce his arguments;

“Quite right, my boy.

Truth is like religion; it has only two enemies⁠—the too much and the too little.

Your answer is more satisfactory than some of your recent conduct had led me to expect.”

“

He says, sir, that honesty does not consist in never stealing, but in knowing how and where it will be safe to do so.

”

for if we aim steadily at imperfection, we shall probably get it within a reasonable time, whereas to the end of our days we should never reach perfection.

Moreover, from a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

” He then turned to his class and said—

Readers of my father’s book will perhaps remember that my mother was not seen at all—she was smuggled into the car of the balloon along with sundry rugs, under which she lay concealed till the balloon had left the earth. All this went for nothing.

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Painters, my father now realised, can do all that historians can, with even greater effect.

All this went for nothing. It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Painters, my father now realised, can do all that historians can, with even greater effect.

Women headed the procession—the younger ones dressed in white, with veils and chaplets of roses, blue cornflower, and pheasant’s eye Narcissus, while the older women were more soberly attired.

“There,” said my father, “you confirm an opinion that I have long held.—

Nothing is so misleading as the testimony of eyewitnesses.

”

If a single loophole were left him, he would be unpardonable, not for disbelieving the story, but for believing it.

The sin against God would lie not in want of faith, but in faith.

“My friends, there are two sins in matters of belief. There is that of believing on too little evidence, and that of requiring too much before we are convinced. The guilt of the latter is incurred, alas!

“I did it very badly.

I never rise to great occasions, I always fall to them, but these things must come as they come.

”

but he thought it more plausible not to knock out exactly the same nail that was missing on my father’s boot. When the change was made, each found—or said he found—the other’s boots quite comfortable.

My father all the time felt as though he were a basket given to a dog.

The dog had got him, was proud of him, and no one must try to take him away.

“As you would me, or anyone else.

It is understood among us that nothing happened. Things may have looked as though they had happened, but they did not happen.

”

“

Nothing is perfect, and Truth makes her mistakes like other people; when she goes wrong and reduces herself to such an absurdity as she has here done, those who love her must save her from herself, correct her, and rehabilitate her.

“Our conclusion, therefore, is this:—

You, and I suppose George, are the only two other people in the world to whom it can ever be told; let me see, then, if I cannot break the ice with it. It is this.

Some men have twin sons; George in this topsy turvey world of ours has twin fathers⁠—you by luck, and me by cunning.

I see you smile; give me your hand.”

Ah! but she was then still budding. That was no excuse.

If a loveable woman⁠—aye, or any woman⁠—has loved a man, even though he cannot marry her, or even wish to do so, at any rate let him not forget her

—and he had forgotten Yram as completely until the last few days, as though he had never seen her. He took her little missive, and under “Look,” he wrote, “I have;” under “Say nothing,” “I will;” under “forget,” “never.”

This is the great service which our church does for us in England, and hence many of us uphold it, though we have no sympathy with the party now dominant within it. ‘

Better,’ we think, ‘a corrupt church than none at all.’

Moreover, those who in my country would step into the church’s shoes are as corrupt as the church, and more exacting.

“There.

What I have said is nine-tenths of it rotten and wrong, but it is the most practicable rotten and wrong that I can suggest, seeing into what a rotten and wrong state of things you have drifted.

And now, Mr. Mayor, do you not think we may join the Mayoress and Mrs. Humdrum?”

“He will brazen it out, relic, chariot, and all: and he will welcome more relics and more cock-and-bull stories; his single eye will be upon his own aggrandisement and that of his order.

Plausible, unscrupulous, heartless scoundrel that he is, he will play for the queen and the women of the court, as Dr. Downie will play for the king and the men.

He and his party will sleep neither night nor day, but they will have one redeeming feature—whoever they may deceive, they will not deceive themselves.

“

Panky must persuade himself of his own lies, before he is quite comfortable about telling them to other people.

Hanky keeps Hanky well out of it; Panky must have a base of operations in Panky. Hanky will lead him by the nose, bit by bit, for his is the master spirit. In England Panky would be what we call an extreme ritualist.”

If it were to go, its place would be soon filled by men who would be as false in letter as the others were, and much more false in spirit.

You want a heart to check your head, and a head to check your heart.

As in our English body politic there are two parties opposed to one another, neither of which can thrive if the other is unduly weakened, so in our spiritual and intellectual world two parties more or less antagonistic are equally necessary.

But if Hankyism triumphs, come what may you must get rid of it, for he and his school will tamper with the one sure and everlasting word of God revealed to us by human experience.

He who plays fast and loose with this is as one who would forge God’s signature to a cheque drawn on God’s own bank.

”

Neither did George say anything about his determination to start for the capital in the morning, and make a clean breast of everything to the King.

So soon does it become necessary even for those who are most cordially attached to hide things from one another.

My father, however, was made comfortable by receiving a promise from the youth that he would take no step of which the persons he had named would disapprove.

And yet my conscious self had caught it in an imperfect sort of a way after all, for from the moment that my dream had left me I had been composed, and easy in my mind that all would be well.

I wish someone would write a book about dreams and parthenogenesis⁠—for that the two are part and parcel of the same story⁠—a brood of folly without father bred⁠—I cannot doubt.

I did not trouble George with any of this rubbish, but only showed him how the mistake had arisen.