Howard Pyle · 400 pages
Rating: (54.1K votes)
“Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand.”
“He who jumps for the moon and gets it not leaps higher than he who stoops for a penny in the mud.”
“So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in time to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten.”
“You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who think that life hath not to do with innocent laughter that can harm no one; these pages are not for you.”
“What is done is done; and the cracked egg cannot be cured.”
“(H)ope, be it never so faint, bringeth a gleam into darkness, like a little rushlight that costeth but a groat.”
“It doth make a man better,' quoth Robin Hood, 'to bear of those noble men so long ago. When one doth list to such tales, his soul doth say, 'put by thy poor little likings and seek to do likewise.' Truly, one may not do as nobly one's self, but in the striving one is better...”
“An I must drink sour ale, I must, but never have I yielded to a man before, and that without would or mark upon my body. Nor, when I bethink me, will I yield now.”
“Let us e'er be merry while we may, for man is but dust, and he hath but a span to live here till the worm getteth him, as our good gossip Swanthold sayeth; so let life be merry while it lasts, say I.”
“When the flood cometh it sweepeth away grain as well as chaff.”
“You who so plod amid serious things that you feel it
shame to give yourself up even for a few short moments
to mirth and joyousness in the land of Fancy; you who
think that life hath nought to do with innocent laughter
that can harm no one; these pages are not for you”
“Now there was no sign of any foul weather, but when one wishes to do a thing . . . one finds no lack of reasons for the doing.”
“Gaffer Swanthold speaks truth when he saith, 'Better a crust with content than honey with a sour heart.”
“So passed the seasons then, so they pass now, and so they will pass in tome to come, while we come and go like leaves of the tree that fall and are soon forgotten.”
“Then all was quiet save only for the low voices of those that talked together, ... , and saving, also, for the mellow snoring of Friar Tuck, who enjoyed his sleep with a noise as of one sawing soft wood very slowly.”
“IN MERRY ENGLAND in the time of old, when good King Henry the Second ruled the land, there lived within the green glades of Sherwood Forest, near Nottingham Town, a famous outlaw whose name was Robin Hood.”
“Let me tell you, an I had the shaping of things in this world, ye should all three have been clothed in the finest silks, and ride upon milk-white horses, with pages at your side, and feed upon nothing but whipped cream and strawberries; for such a life would surely befit your looks." At”
“This is the crazed, manic energy of the bull at the end of the fight, fatally wounded but ploughing ahead, driven only by pain and anger and the mindless will to go on living.”
“A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.”
“You know, there was a time when childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing you could do in your life, and you were literally looking death in the face when you went ahead with it. And so this is a kind of flashback to a time when that's what every woman went through. Not that they got ripped apart, but they had no guarantees about whether they were going to live through it or not.
You know, I recently read - and I don't read nonfiction, generally - Becoming Jane Austen. That's the one subject that would get me to go out and read nonfiction. And the author's conclusion was that one of the reason's Jane Austen might not have married when she did have the opportunity...well, she watched her very dear nieces and friends die in childbirth! And it was like a death sentence: You get married and you will have children. You have children and you will die. (Laughs) I mean, it was a terrifying world.”
“I suppose [...] that the most convincing way to fool an enemy would be to fool a friend.”
“The Price Is Right for Morons.”
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