barbala's reviews
193 reviews

"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All."

Thinking when swimming is not thinking, but something more like elevator music.

The sensation, then, no so much of being misunderstood as being understood too well at one time and then never again.

We love people before we notice we love them, but the act of naming the love makes it different, drags it out into a different light.

It's hard enough to live, she sometimes feels, without also having to think about it.

Harris and I started to peel the potatoes. I should never have thought that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking. The job turned out to be the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever been in. We began cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly, but our lightheartedness was gone by the time the first potato was finished. The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left – at least none worth speaking of. 

It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard. We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. We thought of the happy days of childhood, and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however, over the apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pineapple from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the boat; we felt that life was worth living after all. 

Then we went back into the high road, and Harris sat down on the hamper and said he would go no farther. He said it seemed a quiet spot, and he would like to die there 

People who have tried it, tell me that a clear conscience makes you very happy and contented; but a full stomach does the business quite as well, and is cheaper, and more easily obtained.

That’s Harris all over – so ready to take the burden of everything himself, and put it on the backs of other people. 

We had just commenced the third course – the bread and jam – when a gentleman in shirt sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn’t given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we were trespassing, we would, without further hesitation, believe it. 

Not rollercoasters, not skyscrapers, just the accumulation of small moments that turn acquaintance into friendship.