Tom Brown’s School Days quotes

Then for clanship, they are as bad as Highlanders; it is amazing the belief they have in one another. With them there is nothing like the Browns, to the third and fourth generation.

“Blood is thicker than water,” is one of their pet sayings.

They can’t be happy unless they are always meeting one another. Never were such people for family gatherings; which, were you a stranger, or sensitive, you might think had better not have been gathered together.

They can’t let anything alone which they think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying all easygoing folk, and spend their time and money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless the job.

It is an impossibility to a Brown to leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile.

Most other folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red faces, white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age.

And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up, or make them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other sane people in the right.

Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck’s back feathers.

Jem and his whole family turn out bad, and cheat them one week, and the next they are doing the same thing for Jack;

Stiggins—says, “We are born in a vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a situation.” These consequences I, for one, am ready to encounter.

I pity people who weren’t born in a vale.

I don’t mean a flat country; but a vale—that is, a flat country bounded by hills. The having your hill always in view if you choose to turn towards him—that’s the essence of a vale.

The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon’s Hill, a curious little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind—St. George, the country folk used to tell me—killed a dragon.

Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside.

Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come to a little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn and privet underwood.

we are moving on from top to bottom. Little dirty Jack, who abides in Clement’s Inn gateway, and blacks my boots for a penny, takes his month’s hop-picking every year as a matter of course. Why shouldn’t he? I’m delighted at it.

I love vagabonds, only I prefer poor to rich ones.

Couriers and ladies’-maids, imperials and travelling carriages, are an abomination unto me; I cannot away with them. But for dirty Jack, and every good fellow who, in the words of the capital French song, moves about,

Another was, that the house was always full of young girls, with clean, shining faces, who broke plates and scorched linen, but made an atmosphere of cheerful, homely life about the place, good for everyone who came within its influence.

Mrs. Brown loved young people, and in fact human creatures in general, above plates and linen.

They were more like a lot of elder children than servants, and felt to her more as a mother or aunt than as a mistress.

and indeed his whole feeling towards Noah was strongly tainted with awe. And when the old gentleman was gathered to his fathers, Tom’s lamentation over him was not unaccompanied by a certain joy at having seen the last of the wig.

“Poor old Noah, dead and gone,” said he; “Tom Brown so sorry. Put him in the coffin, wig and all.”

But old Benjy was young master’s real delight and refuge.

They don’t attend the feasts themselves, and call them disreputable; whereupon the steadiest of the poor leave them also, and they become what they are called.

Class amusements, be they for dukes or ploughboys, always become nuisances and curses to a country.

The true charm of cricket and hunting is that they are still more or less sociable and universal; there’s a place for every man who will come and take his part.

her old aunt catches hold of her, saying, “Bless ’ee, child, doan’t ’ee go a’nigst it;” but she breaks away and runs towards the stage calling his name. Willum keeps up his guard stoutly, but glances for a moment towards the voice.

No guard will do it, Willum, without the eye.

The shepherd steps round and strikes, and the point of his stick just grazes Willum’s forehead, fetching off the skin, and the blood flows, and the umpire cries, “Hold!” and poor Willum’s chance is up for the day.

Well, well, we must bide our time.

Life isn’t all beer and skittles; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.

If I could only drive this into the heads of you rising parliamentary lords, and young swells who “have your ways made for you,” as the saying is, you, who frequent palaver houses and West-end clubs, waiting always ready to strap yourselves on to the …

Then there was poor Jacob Dodson, the half-witted boy, who ambled about cheerfully, undertaking messages and little helpful odds and ends for everyone, which, however, poor Jacob managed always hopelessly to imbrangle.

Everything came to pieces in his hands, and nothing would stop in his head.

They nicknamed him Jacob Doodle-calf.

He was a boy to be proud of, with his curly brown hair, keen gray eye, straight active figure, and little ears and hands and feet, “as fine as a lord’s,” as Charity remarked to Tom one day, talking, as usual, great nonsense.

Lords’ hands and ears and feet are just as ugly as other folk’s when they are children, as anyone may convince himself if he likes to look.

Tight boots and gloves, and doing nothing with them, I allow make a difference by the time they are twenty.

“I won’t tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God; if he don’t do that for his mother’s sake and teaching, he won’t for mine. Shall I go into the sort of temptations he’ll meet with? No, I can’t do that.

Never do for an old fellow to go into such things with a boy.

He won’t understand me. Do him more harm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him to mind his work, and say he’s sent to school to make himself a good scholar?

… then the guard, having disposed of his luggage, comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations for facing the three hours before dawn—no joke for those who minded cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of his late Majesty.

I sometimes think that you boys of this generation are a deal tenderer fellows than we used to be.

At any rate you’re much more comfortable travellers, for I see every one of you with his rug or plaid, and other dodges for preserving the caloric, and most of you going in, those fuzzy, dusty, padded first-class carriages.

It was another affair altogether, a dark ride on the top of the Tally-ho, I can tell you, in a tight Petersham coat, and your feet dangling six inches from the floor.

Then you knew what cold was, and what it was to be without legs, for not a bit of feeling had you in them after the first half-hour.

But it had its pleasures, the old dark ride. First there was the consciousness of silent endurance, so dear to every Englishman—of standing out against something, and not giving in.

What struck Tom’s youthful imagination most was the desperate and lawless character of most of the stories. Was the guard hoaxing him? He couldn’t help hoping that they were true.

It’s very odd how almost all English boys love danger.

You can get ten to join a game, or climb a tree, or swim a stream, when there’s a chance of breaking their limbs or getting drowned, for one who’ll stay on level ground, or in his depth, or play quoits or bowls.

You see I’m doing the handsome thing by you, because my father knows yours; besides, I want to please the old lady. She gave me half a sov. this half, and perhaps’ll double it next, if I keep in her good books.”

There’s nothing for candour like a lower-school boy

, and East was a genuine specimen—frank, hearty, and good-natured, well-satisfied with himself and his position, and choke-full of life and spirits, and all the Rugby prejudices and traditions which he had been able to get together in the long course of one half-year during …

The small praepostors dash in every now and then, and generally chastise some quiet, timid boy who is equally afraid of acorns and canes, while the principal performers get dexterously out of the way.

And so calling-over rolls on somehow, much like the big world, punishments lighting on wrong shoulders, and matters going generally in a queer, cross-grained way, but the end coming somehow, which is, after all, the great point.

And now the master of the week has finished, and locked up the big school;

You say you don’t see much in it all—nothing but a struggling mass of boys, and a leather ball which seems to excite them all to great fury, as a red rag does a bull.

My dear sir, a battle would look much the same to you, except that the boys would be men, and the balls iron; but a battle would be worth your looking at for all that, and so is a football match.

You can’t be expected to appreciate the delicate strokes of play, the turns by which a game is lost and won—it takes an old player to do that; but the broad philosophy of football you can understand if you will.

they are most useful players, the dodgers, who seize on the ball the moment it rolls out from amongst the chargers, and away with it across to the opposite goal. They seldom go into the scrummage, but must have more coolness than the chargers.

As endless as are boys’ characters, so are their ways of facing or not facing a scrummage at football.

Three-quarters of an hour are gone; first winds are failing, and weight and numbers beginning to tell. Yard by yard the Schoolhouse have been driven back, contesting every inch of ground.

Old Brooke, of course, will kick it out, but who shall catch and place it? Call Crab Jones. Here he comes, sauntering along with a straw in his mouth, the queerest, coolest fish in Rugby.

If he were tumbled into the moon this minute, he would just pick himself up without taking his hands out of his pockets or turning a hair.

But it is a moment when the boldest charger’s heart beats quick. Old Brooke stands with the ball under his arm motioning the School back; he will not kick out till they are all in goal, behind the posts.

“Well, mind and get all right for next Saturday.” And the leader passed on, leaving East better for those few words than all the opodeldoc in England would have made him, and Tom ready to give one of his ears for as much notice.

Ah! light words of those whom we love and honour, what a power ye are, and how carelessly wielded by those who can use you!

Surely for these things also God will ask an account.

You’ll be all the better football players for learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through. But depend on it, there’s nothing breaks up a house like bullying.

Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so goodbye to the Schoolhouse match if bullying gets ahead here.

” (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the tables.) “Then there’s fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking bad spirits, and punch, and such rotgut stuff.

The Doctor takes no notice of anything, but quietly turns over his book and finds the place, and then stands, cap in hand and finger in book, looking straight before his nose.

He knows better than anyone when to look, and when to see nothing.

Tonight is singing night, and there’s been lots of noise and no harm done—nothing but beer drunk, and nobody the worse for it, though some of them do look hot and excited.

He and East, having earned it, stood now looking on. No catastrophe happened, as all the captives were cool hands, and didn’t struggle. This didn’t suit Flashman.

What your real bully likes in tossing is when the boys kick and struggle, or hold on to one side of the blanket, and so get pitched bodily on to the floor; it’s no fun to him when no one is hurt or frightened.

“Let’s toss two of them together, Walker,” suggested he.

It will be the same with you who wonder, my sons, whatever your prowess may be in cricket, or scholarship, or football.

Two or three years, more or less, and then the steadily advancing, blessed wave will pass over your names as it has passed over ours.

Nevertheless, play your games and do your work manfully—see only that that be done—and let the remembrance of it take care of itself.

… up into small sets and parties, and lost the strong feeling of fellowship which he set so much store by, and with it much of the prowess in games and the lead in all school matters which he had done so much to keep up.

In no place in the world has individual character more weight than at a public school.

Remember this, I beseech you, all you boys who are getting into the upper forms.

… only to do your duty and help others to do theirs, and you may leave the tone of feeling in the school higher than you found it, and so be doing good which no living soul can measure to generations of your countrymen yet unborn.

For boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles.

Every school, indeed, has its own traditionary standard of right and wrong, which cannot be transgressed with impunity, marking certain things as low and blackguard, and certain others as lawful and right.

“

Oh, toadies never get cut; they’re too useful.

Besides, he has no end of great hampers from home, with wine and game in them; so he toadied and fed himself into favour.”

Flashman forgets to explain what risk they ran, but he speaks to willing ears.

Gambling makes boys selfish and cruel as well as men.

“That’s true. We always draw blanks,” cried one.—“Now, sir, you shall sell half, at any rate.”

… thirty shillings, which he and East contrived to spend in about three days in the purchase of pictures for their study, two new bats and a cricket-ball—all the best that could be got—and a supper of sausages, kidneys, and beefsteak pies to all the rebels.

Light come, light go; they wouldn’t have been comfortable with money in their pockets in the middle of the half.

The embers of Flashman’s wrath, however, were still smouldering, and burst out every now and then in sly blows and taunts, and they both felt that they hadn’t quite done with him yet.

Tom wondered if the Doctor knew that his visits to Bilton Grange were for the purpose of taking rooks’ nests (a proceeding strongly discountenanced by the owner thereof), and those to Caldecott’s Spinney were prompted chiefly by the conveniences for setting night-lines.

What didn’t the Doctor know? And what a noble use he always made of it!

He almost resolved to abjure rook-pies and night-lines forever. The tea went merrily off, the Doctor now talking of holiday doings, and then of the prospects of the half-year—what chance there was for the Balliol scholarship, whether the eleven would be a good one.

and he lay down gently, and cried as if his heart would break. He was only fourteen years old.

It was no light act of courage in those days, my dear boys, for a little fellow to say his prayers publicly, even at Rugby.

A few years later, when Arnold’s manly piety had begun to leaven the School, the tables turned; before he died, in the Schoolhouse at least, and I believe in the other house, the rule was the other way.

And so it had come to pass with Tom, as with all who will not confess their Lord before men; and for the last year he had probably not said his prayers in earnest a dozen times.

Poor Tom! the first and bitterest feeling which was like to break his heart was the sense of his own cowardice.

The vice of all others which he loathed was brought in and burnt in on his own soul. He had lied to his mother, to his conscience, to his God. How could he bear it?

“Tom,” said he, “blest if you ain’t the best old fellow ever was. I do like to see you go into a thing. Hang it, I wish I could take things as you do; but I never can get higher than a joke.

Everything’s a joke. If I was going to be flogged next minute, I should be in a blue funk, but I couldn’t help laughing at it for the life of me.

”

“Well, I think East is right,” said Arthur; “I can’t see but what it’s right to do the best you can, though it mayn’t be the best absolutely.

Every man isn’t born to be a martyr.

”

“Yes, he’s a whole-hog man, is Tom. Must have the whole animal-hair and teeth, claws and tail,” laughed East. “

Sooner have no bread any day than half the loaf.

”

They were three very fair examples of the way in which such tasks were done at Rugby, in the consulship of Plancus.

And doubtless the method is little changed, for there is nothing new under the sun, especially at schools.

Now be it known unto all you boys who are at schools which do not rejoice in the time-honoured institution of the vulgus (commonly supposed to have been established by William of Wykeham at Winchester, and imported to Rugby by Arnold more for the sake …

in which case, when it happened, considerable grief was the result.

But when did such risk hinder boys or men from shortcuts and pleasant paths?

Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the traditionary method of vulgus doing.

But, of course, no such experience could be gotten as regarded boys in other houses; and as most of the other houses were more or less jealous of the Schoolhouse, collisions were frequent.

After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know?

From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man.

After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know?

From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man.

Everyone who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in …

Human nature is too strong for them, and they don’t follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere.

The world might be a better world without fighting, for anything I know, but it wouldn’t be our world; and therefore I am dead against crying peace when there is no peace, and isn’t meant to be.

I am as sorry as any man to see folk fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but I’d a deal sooner see them doing that than that they should have no fight in them.

It’s a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It’s quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger.

But don’t say “No” because you fear a licking, and say or think it’s because you fear God, for that’s neither Christian nor honest.

And if you do fight, fight it out; and don’t give in while you can stand and see.

the day week that Thompson had died; and during that long afternoon Tom sat in his study reading his Bible, and going every half-hour to the housekeeper’s room, expecting each time to hear that the gentle and brave little spirit had gone home.

But God had work for Arthur to do.

The crisis passed: on Sunday evening he was declared out of danger; on Monday he sent a message to Tom that he was almost well, had changed his room, and was to be allowed to see him the next day.

Tom felt a pang of jealousy, but kicked it out in a moment. “Fancy him on a South Sea island, with the Cherokees, or Patagonians, or some such wild niggers!” (

Tom’s ethnology and geography were faulty, but sufficient for his needs.

) “They’ll make the old Madman cock medicine-man, and tattoo him all over. Perhaps he’s cutting about now all blue, and has a squaw and a wigwam.

“

Because you’re the honestest boy in Rugby, and that ain’t honest.

”

“Does he think you use cribs and vulgus-books?”

Tom felt at once that his flank was turned, but he couldn’t give in.

“He was at Winchester himself,” said he; “he knows all about it.”

Arthur saw that he had got his point; he knew his friend well, and was wise in silence as in speech. He only said, “

I would sooner have the doctor’s good opinion of me as I really am than any man’s in the world.

”

… but I thought how hard it was to be taken away from my mother and sisters and you all, just as I was beginning to see my way to many things, and to feel that I might be a man and do a man’s work.

To die without having fought, and worked, and given one’s life away, was too hard to bear.

I got terribly impatient, and accused God of injustice, and strove to justify myself. And the harder I strove the deeper I sank. Then the image of my dear father often came across me, but I turned from it.

George Arthur.”

I leave you all to guess how he slept, and what he dreamt of.

“Well, Tom,” said East, recovering himself, “I don’t see any objection to the new way.

It’s about as good as the old one, I think, besides the advantage it gives one of feeling virtuous, and looking down on one’s neighbours.

”

I really don’t remember,” said East, speaking slowly and impressively, “to have come across one Latin or Greek sentence this half that I could go and construe by the light of nature.

Whereby I am sure Providence intended cribs to be used.

”

Nor indeed could the friendship have lasted if East had shown no sympathy with these thoughts; so that it was a great relief to have unbosomed himself, and to have found that his friend could listen.

Tom had always had a sort of instinct that East’s levity was only skin-deep, and this instinct was a true one.

East had no want of reverence for anything he felt to be real;

A few moments may do it; and it may be (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you will never do it but once.

But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the name.

You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom of one another’s hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth can or at least ought to sunder you.

A few moments may do it; and it may be (most likely will be, as you are English boys) that you will never do it but once. But done it must be, if the friendship is to be worth the name.

You must find what is there, at the very root and bottom of one another’s hearts; and if you are at one there, nothing on earth can or at least ought to sunder you.

East had remained lying down until Tom finished speaking, as if fearing to interrupt him; he now sat up at the table, and leant his head on one hand, taking up a pencil with the other, and working little holes with it in the table-cover.

“

I only wish it was, Tom. I know I could be popular enough with all the bad ones, but that I won’t have, and the good ones won’t have me.

”

“Well, I just told him all about it.

You can’t think how kind and gentle he was, the great grim man, whom I’ve feared more than anybody on earth.

When I stuck, he lifted me just as if I’d been a little child. And he seemed to know all I’d felt, and to have gone through it all. And I burst out crying—more than I’ve done this five years;

The curtain now rises upon the last act of our little drama, for hard-hearted publishers warn me that a single volume must of necessity have an end.

Well, well! the pleasantest things must come to an end.

I little thought last long vacation, when I began these pages to help while away some spare time at a watering-place, how vividly many an old scene which had lain hid away for years in some dusty old corner of my brain, would come back …

Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once who had somehow or another just gone clean out of sight. Are they dead or living? We know not, but the thought of them brings no sadness with it.

Wherever they are, we can well believe they are doing God’s work and getting His wages.

But are there not some, whom we still see sometimes in the streets, whose haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably find almost any day in the week if we were set to do it, yet from whom we are really farther than …

and the youngest hands declared that they shouldn’t be a bit nervous, and praised their opponents as the jolliest fellows in the world, except perhaps their old friends the Wellesburn men.

How far a little good-nature from their elders will go with the right sort of boys!

The morning had dawned bright and warm, to the intense relief of many an anxious youngster, up betimes to mark the signs of the weather.

The score creeps up to fifty; the boys begin to look blank; and the spectators, who are now mustering strong, are very silent. The ball flies off his bat to all parts of the field, and he gives no rest and no catches to anyone.

But cricket is full of glorious chances, and the goddess who presides over it loves to bring down the most skilful players.

Johnson, the young bowler, is getting wild, and bowls a ball almost wide to the off; the batter steps out and cuts it beautifully to where cover-point is standing very deep—in fact almost off the ground.

“Isn’t it?

But it’s more than a game. It’s an institution,

” said Tom.

Then the cover-point hitter, that cunning man, goes on to bowl slow twisters. Jack waves his hand triumphantly towards the tent, as much as to say, “See if I don’t finish it all off now in three hits.”

Alas, my son Jack, the enemy is too old for thee.

The first ball of the over Jack steps out and meets, swiping with all his force. If he had only allowed for the twist!

And so ends the great match. Winter and Johnson carry out their bats, and, it being a one day’s match, the Lord’s men are declared the winners, they having scored the most in the first innings.

But such a defeat is a victory

: so think Tom and all the School eleven, as they accompany their conquerors to the omnibus, and send them off with three ringing cheers, after Mr.