Magnificent Obsession quotes

And the rumour was peculiarly difficult to throttle because, unfortunately, it was true.

Obviously the hour had arrived for desperate measures.

Dr.

“Now, don’t misunderstand!” he went on quickly, sensing their amazement. “Hudson’s entitled to all his whimsies. So far as I’m concerned, he has earned the right to his flock of phantoms.

He is a genius, and whosoever loveth a genius is out of luck with his devotion except he beareth all things, endureth all things, suffereth long and is kind.

”

It was quite remote from the beaten trail of travel. A mere acre had been tamed to serve the cottage for which his hasty sketches, before leaving, were elaborated and executed in his absence by his loyal friend, Fred Ferguson, the best architect in town.

It was an inhospitable bit of country, thereabouts.

Sheer cliffs, descending abruptly to the black water (a long flight of wooden steps led to the little boathouse and adjacent wharf) had discouraged such colonization as had long since developed the western shore, two miles distant.

“You’re much too rough with him, Clif,” she would expostulate. “He’s only a little boy. You hurt him! Stop it, I tell you!”

“Nonsense!” his father would reply, glancing toward the governess for approval, “you don’t know anything about boys. Does she, Bobby?”

In all truth, she didn’t; but the lad would be distressed over the episode, hardly knowing what answer was expected of him.

None of the epitaphs he had regarded with childish curiosity, as they drove slowly along the narrow, winding roads, was carved deeper. Sometimes, when he thought of it, he winced; sometimes he grinned.

“Well,” she said, handing Colleen her furs, “that’s that!”

“Yes, ma’am,” dutifully replied Colleen, accustomed to occasional outbursts of caste-forgetful confidences vouchsafed by her mistress, “it certainly is!”

Upon which followed the memorable elegy spoken by his mother.

“Well; I’ll know now where he is!”

Sometimes, when, as a collegian, Bobby was at that exact state of intoxication where the tragic in a man’s experience becomes distorted into broad, screaming farce, and even sacred memories make wry faces and put out their tongues in scorn of everything decent, he would …

Bobby, approximately sober, would get him home, somehow, and put him to bed with all the solicitude of a mother. Apparently it never occurred to him that he was jeopardizing his chum’s future.

“Poor old Tommy!” he would say, unlacing his shoes. “I’m afraid you’ll just never learn to drink like a gentleman!”

Nor was the Merrick influence much of a blessing upon the Delta Omega house into which he and Tom moved as sophomores. Had he been less lovable, he might have been less dangerous.

She returned slowly to the bedside, drew up a chair, sat down, and rested her plump arms upon the white counterpane close to his pillow.

“You have something very valuable besides money; but you’ll never use it.”

Her tone was judicial, prophetic. “It’s in you, all right, but it will never come out. Nobody will ever know that you had it.

and, ultimately, be pushed into a crypt in the big, echoing, gothic mausoleum alongside Clifford, the waster.

Oh, there had been an occasional ray of hope; a mere phosphorescence; just enough to make the darkness a little more dense when the flash was over.

On the last day of his grandson’s senior year … it was a midyear class, with ceremonies deferred until commencement … Nicholas had driven over to the little city of the State University, lunching with his old-time friend the head of the Department of Chemistry.

“You should be pretty well acquainted with the kitchen habits of that cook, by this time, Grandpère. It’s the same one, isn’t it, in all these stories?”

“By no means, sir,” protested Nicholas. “The last cook was a man!”

Bobby was restless to be by himself and eager to divert his grandfather to his novel so that he might escape. The emotional strain of the past hour had been decidedly wearing.

“I couldn’t get anything out of him. He’s too damned dumb.”

“Yeah?” the sophisticated Sunday editor would reply. “My boy, you have made the customary blunder of mistaking Tony’s depth for thickness!”

Bobby Merrick knew from experience that Tony would be on hand tonight, to attend to his pressing wants.

There would be freshly-made coffee and a salad worthy of an exacting palate.

Tony knew exactly when to stop rubbing the bowl with garlic.

Bursting into the little café, Bobby found himself the sole patron. Tony, drowsy but amiable, made haste to draw out a chair for him. With the grace of a courtier, he took his guest’s heavy fur coat and deftly shook the snow from its shoulders.

“But I thought you had succeeded, dear.” She followed him with inquiring eyes as he multiplied his little attentions and made no end of trouble for himself trying to find a place for her umbrella. “You don’t resemble a conquering hero.

You look more like the man who had set out after a beautiful butterfly, under the impression it was some kind of a bird; and found, after battering its wings to bits, that he had captured a worm.

”

“I mean to! … I’m going to give you your first information about the genius-type …

The genius won’t pigeonhole! He won’t card-index! He won’t file⁠ ⁠…

And because he won’t, the dull-eyed dolts who hadn’t needed any trimming to fit whatever pack they properly belonged to, think him crazy. They can’t understand him, so—he’s unhooked! He romps away where they can’t follow, so—he’s gone wild!

“No. I don’t think so. Once you outgrow the simplicities, you can’t recover them or even remember them with any satisfaction.

It’s not far, you know, from corn pone to plum pudding, but it’s a long way back!

”

… with the new music but lately imported, duty free, from the head waters of the Congo and brought to triumphant perfection by the highest paid orchestra in the States—fresh from New York where its engagement had been abruptly terminated by a padlock … Gordon’s Gardens!

Fiddles squeaked, saxophones squealed, oboes giggled, clarinets wailed, tubas yawped, triangles clanged⁠ ⁠… “Lament of the Damned,” perhaps?⁠ ⁠… Not at all!⁠ ⁠… “I’m Lonesome and Blue for You.”

Bobby Merrick, waiting in the rococo lobby for his coat check, listened with the ear of a man from Mars and drew a crooked smile.

“Taking yourself rather seriously, aren’t you?”

“Asclepius is as jealous as Jehovah, my son.”

By consent, they had stopped ragging each other, and Bobby was asking interestedly about various members of the set from which his attention had lately been deflected.

The note had said eleven, and he had entered while the clock was striking. It had not specified what the dean wished to see him about. That would have been too much to expect.

Courtesy and consideration were against the rules governing the official action of deans.

Big universities, like monopolistic public utilities and internal revenue offices, enjoyed high-hatting their constituencies; liked to make an impressive swank with their authority; liked to keep people waiting, guessing, worrying; liked to put ’em to all the bother possible.

She reached out her left hand to Bobby and clasped his with grateful fingers. “What a lovely thing for you to do!” she said.

“Oh⁠—everybody has his troubles,” stammered Bobby, hoping the situation would be spared a debauch of sentimentality. “The least trouble in the world is a shortage of money.”

“Unless one hasn’t any,” chuckled Dawson.

If he didn’t get it, it was because he hadn’t wanted it badly enough! No matter how patently futile it was to continue battering the door, any man who wanted anything earnestly enough could open any kind of a door!

“Got to have bloody knuckles,” reflected Bobby, “before you can say you tried it and it wouldn’t work!”

The fable accompanying this proposition told of a poor widow, with no influence at all, who wanted justice from a rich man. The judge was an utter rascal. The woman had no attorney, no friends, and no case;

He, in turn, energizes other people … If you know anything about chemistry, you will be helped by considering this as a process of catalysis …

Personality projection is like any other investment. The thing goes on! It earns compound interest.

If you were the agent that set it going, the credit’s yours … Some of it will be going at full blast long after you have been declared dead.

… No, sir! By the Great Horn Spoon—No! …

Faraday did his in an attic, alone, on an empty stomach!

” He rose with a prodigious yawn and sauntered toward the door.

“Run along to bed!” Nicholas slapped him vigorously on the back. “Glad we had this talk! Glad your worries are all over! Now you can be happy again!”

“I’m not looking for happiness, Grandpère⁠ ⁠… She’s out of my reach!”

“Since when was happiness a she?”

… Doc‑tor Merrick! … Dear me!”—with a shrug and a sigh—“I had hoped they might be Bobby and Helen by this time!” To which Helen had replied, leaning toward her, in an apologetic, maternal undertone,

“Drink your milk, little one. There’s a good child!”

… They had laughed, their merriment in the nature of applause.

“Well, doctor—if you don’t mind being helpfully candid with me, exactly how did it strike you—as a scientist?”

“Oh, I’m not much of a scientist. A surgeon doesn’t have to be a scientist⁠—just a good mechanic.”

Betty McLaren protested with a laugh.

“Oh, it’s more than that! … Asking God to give it to you!”

“Well, that depends on your credit.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Betty.

same long, slender, artist fingers—but they had left off groping uncertainly for things. They had achieved a sureness, a poise, a confidence not to be had at less expense than the honest, tireless, discriminating experience of dealing with facts—let the facts be no end unpleasant.

In short, they were the mouth, eyes, and hands of a surgeon.

Bobby’s decision to go in for a profession had failed to impress her favourably. Beyond a feeling—which she tardily and peevishly expressed—that he was enslaving himself unnecessarily, she had been left unstirred by his resolution.

Exactly why Helen Hudson wanted or needed employment badly enough to become a routing agent in the office of the Beamond and Grayson Travel Bureau, Joyce couldn’t imagine. It was so unlike her. She hated routine. She wasn’t used to taking orders or keeping hours.

She was about as practical as a Persian kitten on a satin pillow.

Bobby had had to listen to an inordinate amount of this, astounded at his own patience, though in his honest moments he reflected that had Joyce not prattled so volubly of her own accord he would have been obliged to prime her to it.

They had lunch together and tried heroically to recover their long lost collegiate mood, but it was rough going.

Too much water had gone under the bridge⁠ ⁠… Too little water had gone into Tommy.

“Sometimes—” Masterson furtively pushed a soiled cuff back into his coat-sleeve, and attempted to steady his leaky spoon—“sometimes, I’ve had a notion to end it. If I wasn’t such a damned coward, I’d have done it long ago.”

When they had wheeled her in, he feared for a moment he would be unable to achieve that professional attitude.

He hesitated, before making his first incision, as he might have hesitated had the scalpel been aimed at his own heart.

Once that deft stroke had been accomplished, he was all surgeon.