The Little Nugget quotes

“Got a cigarette?” he said.

He was an extraordinarily unpleasant little boy.

Physically the portrait standing on the chair did him more than justice. Painted by a mother’s loving hand, it flattered him. It was bulgy. He was more bulgy. It was sullen. He scowled.

Painted by a mother’s loving hand, it flattered him. It was bulgy. He was more bulgy. It was sullen. He scowled. And, art having its limitations, particularly amateur art, the portrait gave no hint of his very repellent manner. He was an intensely sophisticated child.

He had the air of one who has seen all life has to offer, and is now permanently bored.

His speech and bearing were those of a young man, and a distinctly unlovable young man.

“Then stay by me, angel-face.”

“Oh, slush!” muttered angel-face beneath his breath.

“Say, I’m darned hungry,” he added.

I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought.

At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity.

I have no illusions regarding my character when I first met Audrey Blake.

Nature had given me the soul of a pig, and circumstances had conspired to carry on Nature’s work.

I loved comfort, and I could afford to have it. From the moment I came of age and relieved my trustees of the care of my money, I wrapped myself in comfort as in a garment. I wallowed in egoism.

To say that that moment was a turning point in my life would be to use a ridiculously inadequate phrase.

It dynamited my life. In a sense it killed me.

The man I had been died that night, regretted, I imagine, by few. Whatever I am today, I am certainly not the complacent spectator of life that I had been before that night.

There was something missing. I had felt it when I was speaking. To me my voice had had no ring of conviction. And then I saw what it was. There was no mystery. We knew each other too well.

Friendship kills love.

She put my thought into words.

It happened that you gave me mine, but that wasn’t your fault. I was bound to get it—somehow.” I laughed. “Fate was waiting for me round the corner.

Fate wanted something to hit me with. You happened to be the nearest thing handy.

”

I was too surprised to speak.

Verily, some have greatness thrust upon them.

“I hain’t never seen youse, Sam,” he continued, “but I know it’s you. And I’ll tell youse how I doped it out.

Instead of the goddess, I had found a companionable human being, and I imagined that I had effected the change myself, and by sheer force of will brought Audrey into a reasonable relation to the scheme of things.

I suppose a not too intelligent moth has much the same views with regard to the lamp.

His last thought, as he enters the flame, is probably one of self-congratulation that he has arranged his dealings with it on such a satisfactory commonsense basis.

“Experience. I’m five years older than I was when I used to play to you before, and I’ve seen a good deal in those five years. It may not be altogether pleasant seeing life, but—well, it makes you play the piano better.

Experience goes in at the heart and comes out at the fingertips.

”

The upper part of his face was covered by a strip of white linen, with holes for the eyes, and there was a Browning pistol in his hand.

It is my belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school would become child’s play.

A silence such as no threat of bad marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the classroom.

He had partly adjusted his mind to the quiet contemplation of Mr. MacGinnis and friends when he was called upon to face this fresh disaster. And he had a cold in the head, which unmans the stoutest.

Napoleon would have won Waterloo if Wellington had had a cold in the head.

“Augustus Beckford caddot be fou’d?” he echoed feebly.

He bent forward and tapped me on the knee.

“I propose to stick to you like a label on a bottle, sonny,” he said. “That’s what I propose to do.”

I was finding it difficult, such is the effect of a guilty conscience, to meet his eye, and the fact irritated me.

To me it seemed to end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest. What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a stable yard, however apparently empty.

I might have known that at a school there are no empty places.

“I must say it jarred me when I heard you pulling that stuff,” continued White.

He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There was something indescribably irritating in the action.

As one who has had experience, I can state that, while to be arrested at all is bad, to be arrested by a detective with a fatherly manner is maddening.

“See here,” he said, “we must get together over this business.”

“Have you ever experienced the love of a good woman, sonny? It’s a wonderful thing.” He brooded sentimentally for a moment, then continued, and—to my mind—somewhat spoiled the impressiveness of his opening words.

“The love of a good woman,” he said, “is about the darnedest wonderful layout that ever came down the pike. I know. I’ve had some.”

A spark from his cigarette fell on his hand. He swore a startled oath.

It was odd to wake up and realize that I was in London. Years seemed to have passed since I had left it.

Time is a thing of emotions, not of hours and minutes, and I had certainly packed a considerable number of emotional moments into my stay at Sanstead House.

I lay in bed, reviewing the past, while Smith, with a cheerful clatter of crockery, prepared my breakfast in the next room.

But it was there, and its presence gave me support. I found myself combating the thrill the sight of her had caused, and looking at her with a critical and hostile eye. Who was she that she should enslave a man against his will?

Fascination exists only in the imagination of the fascinated.

If he have the strength to deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist, he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm reasonableness.

Fascination exists only in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist, he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm reasonableness.

There must have been sturdy, levelheaded Egyptian citizens who could not understand what people saw to admire in Cleopatra.

Thus reasoning, I raised my hat, uttered a crisp “Good morning,” and passed on, the very picture of the brisk man of affairs.

Perhaps it was some sound, barely audible, that aroused me from my torpor and set my blood tingling with anticipation. Perhaps it was the way the door was opening.

An honest draught does not move a door furtively, in jerks.

I sat up noiseless, tense, and alert. And then, very quietly, somebody entered the room.

Complete quiescence marked the deportment of Mr. Fisher during these days. He did not attempt to repeat his last effort. The coffee came to the study unmixed with alien drugs.

Sam, like lightning, did not strike twice in the same place.

He had the artist’s soul, and disliked patching up bungled work. If he made another move, it would, I knew, be on entirely fresh lines.

Clenching my fists and glaring at him, I cried, “I’ll foil you yet, you hound!”

Some people have no soul for the dramatic. He smiled tolerantly.

“Sure,” he said. “Anything you like, Desperate Desmond. Enjoy yourself!”

“Thanks for tipping me off, sonny. It’s a thing worth knowing. Why did you do it?”

“Because I love you, Samuel. Good night.”

I rose late and breakfasted at my leisure. The peace of the English country inn enveloped me as I tilted back my chair and smoked the first pipe of the morning.

“I—I was not frightened,” she said, without conviction.

“I was,” I said, with conviction. “It was too sudden for me. It’s the sort of thing one wants to get used to gradually. I shall be ready for it another time.”

I made for the stairs.

She looked at me hopefully, as if I were a mine of ideas. Her voice was level, without a suggestion of fear in it.

Women have the gift of being courageous at times when they might legitimately give way. It is part of their unexpectedness.

This was certainly such an occasion. Daylight would bring us relief, for I did not suppose that even Buck MacGinnis would care to conduct a siege which might be interrupted by the arrival of tradesmen’s carts;

If mine had remained steady, I should have ignored the hammering. From the sound, it appeared to be made by some wooden instrument—a mallet from the carpenter’s shop I discovered later—and the door could be relied on to hold its own without my intervention.

For a novice to violence, however, to maintain a state of calm inaction is the most difficult feat of all.

I was irritated and worried by the noise, and exaggerated its importance. It seemed to me that it must be stopped at once.

My mind was like the morning, grey and overcast.

Conscience may be expelled, but, like Nature, it will return.

Mine, which I had cast from me, had crept back with the daylight. I had had my hour of freedom, and it was now for me to pay for it.