Home > Work > Zuleika Dobson
41 " In the hearing of the gods, who hear all, it is conversely unsafe to make a simple and direct statement. "
― Max Beerbohm , Zuleika Dobson
42 " When the day came for her departure, the city wore such an air of sullen mourning as it had not worn since the Prussians marched to its Elysee. "
43 " He had heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself. "
44 " She was particularly struck by a remark of Aristotle’s, that tragedy was “more philosophic” than history, inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while history was concerned with merely what had been. "
45 " Explain yourself!" he commanded."Isn't that rather much for a man to ask of a woman?""I don't know. I have no experience of women. In the abstract, it seems to me that every man has aright to some explanation from the woman who has ruined his life." (page 90) "
46 " I must motor to Windsor for this wretched Investiture. "
47 " Different from Zuleika, he cared for his wardrobe and his toilet-table not as a means to making others admire him the more, but merely as a means through which he could intensify, a ritual in which to express and realise, his own idolatry. "
48 " but she wanted ALL Oxford to see her—see her NOW. "
49 " There he adjusted his hat with care, and regarded himself very seriously, very sternly, from various angles, like a man invited to paint his own portrait for the Uffizi. "
50 " He knew well, however, that women care little for a man’s appearance, and that what they seek in a man is strength of character, and rank, and wealth. "
51 " She remembered having read that all the greatest men in history had been of less than the middle height. "
52 " For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. "
53 " It was the first kiss he had ever given outside his family circle. "
54 " What manner of man, he wondered, was he? A coward, piling profligacy on poltroonery? Or a hero, claiming exemption from moral law? "
55 " Of all the emotions, hatred is the most excruciating. Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful. Of all deaths, the bitterest that can befall a man is that he lay down his life to flatter the woman he deems vilest of her sex. "
56 " A man who doesn’t reel on receipt of his death-warrant may yet break down when he has had time to think it over. "
57 " Is there," he asked with a bitter smile, "any one of you who doesn't with his whole heart love Miss Dobson?” Nobody held up a hand. "As I feared," said the Duke, knowing not that if a hand had been held up he would have taken it as a personal insult. No man really in love can forgive another for not sharing his ardour. His jealousy for himself when his beloved prefers another man is hardly a stronger passion than his jealousy for her when she is not preferred to all other women. "
58 " The peripety was according to the best rules of tragic art. "
59 " If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost--he becomes just an unit in unreason. "
60 " Why not?” He mocked himself for the morbid vigil he had spent in probing and vainly binding the wounds of his false pride. "