E. F. Benson

“ I may become a professional golfer, I may become a gardener, or a mesmerist, or a musician, with long elfin locks. Really, at the age of twenty, no fellow ought to know what he is going to become, unless indigence drives him to become something. ”

“ And then—oh, Hughie!—then some poor white-faced devil, like that man there, comes in—he's half-blind, too, and I diagnose lead-poisoning—and one feels that it is only the brutes that perish who don't give their whole lives to trying to help a few of such sufferers out of the myriads. I wonder if suggestion would have any effect in definite organic disease? I don't see why not. Definite organic disease can assuredly be set up by nerves and worry, so why should it not be cured through the nerves also? I want to test that. But, first of all, I shall win the amateur championship. ”

“ It is necessary to have a good deal of leisure to think about marrying, while, as far as one can judge, there's not much leisure afterwards. Now, will you please finish that Chianti, or shall I? No, I think neither of us will. We'll send it over to that poor, white-faced fellow with our compliments."
So for the next seven years Henry Attwood lived, with all his heart, mind, and soul, the delectable life so proper to the years between twenty and thirty, when the powers both of enjoyment and of learning are so keen, doing with all his might the things that seemed to him most worth while. ”

“ But if the man was a golfer at all—and most men think they are—he would be far more stimulated by an amateur champion than by you. We all know perfectly well that no medicine ever cured anybody. What cures is the stimulus you give. ”

“ HENRY ATTWOOD at the age of twenty was left an orphan, and cursed with a competence. Some natures are so strong that this blighting influence of a competence has no effect on them, and, like good citizens, they continue to work like galley-slaves in order to turn their competence into affluence, and pay taxes on the higher scale obligingly provided by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in order to penalise industry. ”

“ I really don't ask any more than to play golf all day, have twenty minutes with the gloves—Jove, I could do without the gloves, for I believe you've broken a rib for me!—and then drink enormous quantities of rough, strong wine. ”

“ Have you ever drunk hot camomile tea? It makes you sleep like a top. And in the middle of the night they will awake drowsily and drink some water. And they'll feel far brisker next morning than if they had spent half the night in the pub. They want to be brisk and not tired; they drink spirits because they are tired. But most of them love medicine, and they will give M.O.M. a trial, if it's only because I tell them to. ”

“ There's no limit to the power of the imagination over the body and the mind. But we all want 'an outward and visible sign,' as the Catechism says. If you tell a dyspeptic man that there is nothing wrong with him sufficiently powerfully, he will perhaps improve, but only a little. ”

“ It's too early to choose. One should not choose until one has seen more what choices there are. Everyone ought to be supported by the State till he is forty. Then he is probably past work, you will say, and ought to be painlessly put out of the way. ... Again, I've often thought of becoming a clergyman, not a country parsonage kind of buffer, with a glass of port wine after lunch, but a real parson down in the slums. But whenever I think of becoming anything, I feel that I've got a vocation for it."
Hugh Ingleton, with grim, serious face, rose and tossed him a pair of boxing-gloves. ”

“ Assuming, as was indeed the case, that their spiritual requirements had been attended to by his clerical brethren, he coaxed or scolded the sick into a revival of their nervous energies which might combat their real or imaginary diseases, while if they could combat no more, he brightened the way into the dark valley with a lamp compounded, so to speak, of foolish nonsense and those little pleasant trivialities of this world of ours, which retain their interest even when the darkness is immediately and inevitably going to close round us. ”

“ But the main work of the pill will be done by the man's belief in its efficacy. I'm thinking out a medicine now which I expect will cure almost everything. It will cure, in any case, all the ailments that lead to organic disease. ”

“ It is true that his charming wife does all that can be expected of a mere woman in this direction, but the wealth that flows in a continual Pactolus into his bank balance seems to defy her most earnest endeavours. ”

“ There's a lot of dyspepsia here, not among the very poorest, but chiefly among those who, when they feel rather unwell, set themselves down to get through a piece of beefsteak, which they think will strengthen them. ”

“ You are bound by materialistic views. You don't know how a little excitement and interest pulls a patient round. You and I, for instance, if we were called in to prescribe for a case of influenza, would certainly do exactly the same thing from a medical point of view. ”