“ ELLMOUR Ah! courtship to marriage is but as the music in the play-house till the curtain's drawn; but that once up, then opens the scene of pleasure.
Belinda. Oh, foh—no; rather, courtship to marriage is a very witty prologue to a very dull play. ”

“ When easy-going sinners
Sit down to Richmond dinners,
And life's swift stream flows straighter—
By Jove, it would be rare,
If care were not the waiter
Behind a fellow's chair.
If wit were always radiant,
And wine were always iced,
And bores were kicked out straightway
Through a convenient gateway;
Then down the years' long gradient
'Twere sad to be enticed,
If wit were always radiant,
And wine were always iced.
Mortimer Collins, in The Owl.
UILDING a staircase for Sir Henry Meux, [Beazley] called it making a new "Gradus ad Parnassum," because it was steps for the muses. ”

“ W. M. Thackeray.
'AMOUR est comme les maladies épidémiques; plus on les craint, plus on y est exposé.
Chamfort, Maximes.
MARRY (AND DON'T) COME UP.
FELLOW that's single, a fine fellow's he;
But a fellow that's married's a felo de se.
Shirley Brooks, Wit and Humour.
BROTHER actor, who had not exactly "taken the house by storm" at his first appearance in London, very stupidly asked Compton: "Was my acting good?" "Well," was the reply, delivered in his inimitable style, "hum! ha! Good is not the word!" ”

“ Shirley Brooks, Wit and Humour.
WAS once as desperately in love as you are now. I adored, and was rejected. "You are in love with certain attributes," said the lady. "Damn your attributes, madam," said I; "I know nothing of attributes." "Sir," she said, with dignity, "you have been drinking." So we parted. She was married afterwards to another, who knew something about attributes, I suppose. I have seen her once, and only once. She had a baby in a yellow gown. I hate a baby in a yellow gown! ”

“ Shirley Brooks, Wit and Humour.
HE bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you can never put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. Corn is the child of song. It waves in all literature. But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone. The bean is a vulgar vegetable, without culture, or any flavour of high society among vegetables. ”

“ Imagine a Roman—whose theory at least of a dinner was that it was a thing for enjoyment, whereas we often look on it as a continuation of the business of the day,—I say, imagine a Roman girding himself up, literally girding himself up, to make an after dinner speech.
Ellesmere, in Helps's Friends in Council.
OLKS will teach you when at school—
"Never tell a lie!"
Nonsense: if you're not a fool
You may always break the rule,
But you must be sly;
For they'll whip you, past a doubt,
If they ever find you out.
Folks say, "Children should not let
Angry passions rise." ”

“ The Compiler's hope is only that it may be found a pleasant companion at spare moments—that it may be considered handy for the pocket, and be thought agreeable to dip into.
To that end, two things have been aimed at in selecting—brevity and variety. There is scarcely anything in the volume that cannot be read almost at a glance, and the matter ranges over a wide extent of literary effort—over play and poem, over essay and novel, over maxim and epigram, over memoir and diary. There is pun, and there is parody; there is satire, and there is sarcasm. ”

“ HE bulk of men in our days are just as immoral as they were in Charles the Second's; the only difference is that they are incomparably more stupid, and that instead of decking their immorality with the jewels of wit, they clumsily try to cover it with the tarpaulin of respectability. ”

“ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass.
ELIGION is like the fashion. One man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet: so every man has his religion. We differ about the trimming. ”

“ Sighing and whining,
Dying and pining,
O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter!
When scarce in their teens, they have wit to perplex us,
With letters and lovers for ever they vex us;
While each still rejects the fair suitor you've brought her;
O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter!
Wrangling and jangling,
Flouting and pouting,
O, what a plague is an obstinate daughter!
R. B. Sheridan, The Duenna.
ITTY: What is your ladyship so fond of? ”

“ LACK is a great fact. Want of fashion in the cut; want of richness in the material; want of chic in the wearer—all these it covers, like charity. There's a sentiment about it which appeals to the feelings, and it is becoming to the skin. ”

“ This is altruism; this is benevolence; this is the sublime outcome of enlightened modern thought. The pleasures of the table, in themselves, are low and beastly ones; but if we each of us are only glad because the others are enjoying them, they become holy and glorious beyond description. ”

“ E sometimes hate those who differ from us in opinion worse than we should for an attempt to injure us in the most serious point. A favourite theory is a possession for life; and we resent any attack upon it proportionably. ”

“ REMEMBER Curran once—in an action for breach of promise of marriage, in which he was counsel for the defendant, a young clergyman—thus appealing to the jury: "Gentlemen, I entreat of you not to ruin this young man by a vindictive verdict, for though he has talents, and is in the Church, he may rise!" ”

“ H. Luttrell, apud Barham.
RIGHAM YOUNG has two hundred wives. He loves not wisely, but two hundred well. He's dreadfully married. He's the most married man I ever saw in my life. He says that all he wants now is to live in peace for the remainder of his days, and have his dying pillow soothed by the loving hands of his family. Well, that's all right, I suppose; but if all his family soothe his dying pillow, he'll have to go out-doors to die. ”

“ Next to meeting a lady acquaintance who, for reasons best known to herself, don't see you when she looks at you, and don't know you when she sees you, it is about the most uncomfortable thing in the world. ”

“ RINCE METTERNICH said to Lord Dudley, "You are the only Englishman I know who speaks good French. It is remarked, the common people in Vienna speak better than the educated men in London." "That may well be," replied Lord Dudley. "Your Highness should recollect that Buonaparte has not been twice in London to teach them." ”

“ Bartle Massey, in George Eliot's Adam Bede.
ON'T you see a hint of marriage
In his sober-sided face,
In his rather careless carriage
And extremely rapid pace?
If he's not committed treason,
Or some wicked action done,
Can you see the faintest reason
Why a bachelor should run?
Why should he be in a flurry?
But a loving wife to greet,
Is a circumstance to hurry
The most dignified of feet!
John Godfrey Saxe, Poems.
R. LUTTRELL once said to me, "Sir, the man who says he does not like a good dinner, is either a fool or a liar."
J. R. Planché, Recollections. ”

“ Henry Aldrich.
[230]
ARHAM] having expressed himself in terms of abhorrence of a piece of baseness and treachery which came under his notice, he was addressed by the delinquent with—"Well, sir, perhaps some day you may come to change your opinion of me!" "Perhaps I may, sir," was the reply; "for if I should find any one who holds a more contemptible opinion of you than I do myself, I should lay down my own and take up his."
R. H. D. Barham, Life of Barham. ”

“ Abroad we forbid folks to roam
For fear they get social or frisky;
But of course they can sit still at home,
And get dismally drunk upon whiskey.
Lord Neaves, Songs and Verses.
A haine des faibles n'est pas si dangereuse que leur amitié. ”

“ Shirley Brooks, Wit and Humour.
HOPE I appreciate the value of children. We should soon come to nothing without them. Without them the common school would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them. The law is not very well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing. ”

“ Who's fond of his dinner,
And doesn't get thinner,
On bottled beer and chops;—
A common-place young man—
A matter-of-fact young man—
A steady and stolid-y, jolly Bank-holiday
Every-day young man!
Grosvenor, in W. S. Gilbert's Patience.
DO not so much want to avoid being cheated, as to afford the expense of being so; the generality of mankind being seldom in good humour but whilst they are imposing upon you in some shape or other. ”

“ HORTLY before his death, being visited by a clergyman whose features as well as language were more lugubrious than consoling, Hood looked up at him compassionately, and said, "My dear sir! I'm afraid your religion doesn't agree with you." ”

“ I said, "is he dead?" "He is as dead, sir," rejoined the gentleman, "as a door nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens, sooner or later, my dear sir." "Ah!" I said; "yes, to be sure. Very true. But what did he die of?" The gentleman burst into a flood of tears, and said, in a voice broken by emotion, "He christened his youngest child, sir, with a toasting fork!"
Charles Dickens, apud J. T. Fields.
SUPPOSE all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally thankful when he says "thank you."
Stephen Guest, in George Eliot's Mill on the Floss. ”

“ So many men do talk of Robin Hood
Who never yet shot arrow from his bow.
Thomas Freeman (circa 1591-1614) .
CANDAL—what one half the world takes a pleasure in inventing, and the other half in believing.
Horace Smith, The Tin Trumpet.
LL'S for the best, indeed
Such is My simple creed;
Still I must go and weed
Hard in my garden.
Frederick Locker, London Lyrics.
HERE'S the use of talking to a woman with babbies? She's got no conscience—no conscience—it's all run to milk.
Bartle Massey, in George Eliot's Adam Bede. ”

“ Judge, in W. S. Gilbert's Trial by Jury.
Y brethren," said Swift in a sermon, "there are three sorts of pride—of birth, of riches, and of talents. I shall not now speak of the latter, none of you being liable to that abominable vice."
Horace Smith, The Tin Trumpet.
O doubt this patience, when the world is damning us,
Is philosophic in our former friends;
It is also pleasant to be deem'd magnanimous,
The more so in obtaining our own ends.
Revenge in person's certainly no virtue,
But then 'tis not my fault if others hurt you. ”

“ EAVEN knows what would become of our sociality if we never visited people we speak ill of; we should live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded solitude.
George Eliot, Janet's Repentance.
ETHINKS the older that one grows
Inclines us more to laugh than scold, though laughter
Leaves us so doubly serious shortly after. ”

“ Lady Salisbury begged Lord Alvanley "to make the set complete, by doing the Jew." "Anything in my power your ladyship may demand," replied Alvanley; "but though no man in England has tried oftener, I never could do a Jew in my life."
R. H. Barham, Life. ”

“ DWIN and Morcar, the Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, declared for him; and even Stigand, the patriotic Archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable——' "
"Found what?" said the Duck.
"Found it," the Mouse replied, rather crossly; "of course you know what 'it' means."
"I know what 'it' means well enough, when I find a thing," said the Duck; "it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?"
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
'VE read in many a novel, that, unless they've
souls that grovel,
Folks prefer, in fact, a hovel
to your dreary marble halls. ”

“ If a man in his private chamber twirls his bandstrings, or plays with a rush to please himself, 'tis well enough, but if he should go into Fleet Street, and sit upon a stall, and twirl a bandstring, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street would laugh at him. ”

“ If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterwards act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your better judgment. ”

“ FRIEND meeting Sir George Rose one day in Lincoln's Inn Fields, with his left eye greatly swollen and inflamed, remonstrated with him, adding that he was surprised Lady Rose should have let him go out of doors in such a condition. "Ah," replied Sir George, "I am out jure mariti" (my right eye) .
Macmillan's Magazine.
T is no comfort to the short
To know you cannot love at all! ”

“ ORKING by the hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such a vexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid by the hour. ”

“ HEN man and wife at odds fall out,
Let Syntax be your tutor;
'Twixt masculine and feminine,
What should one be but neuter?
Anon.
Y friend the late Sam Phillips one day met Douglas Jerrold, and told him he had seen, the day before, Payne Collier looking wonderfully gay and well—quite an evergreen. "Ah," said Jerrold, "he may be evergreen, but he's never read." On my repeating this to Hicks, he smiled and said, "Now that's what I call 'ready wit.' "
J. C. Young, Diary. ”

“ OOKS are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
Phœbus, in Lord Beaconsfield's Lothair.
[53]
E can't assume, so Comte declares, a first or final cause, sir;
Phenomena are all we know, their order and their laws, sir;
While Hegel's modest formula, a single line to sum in,
Is "Nothing is, and nothing's not, but everything's becomin'." ”

“ T was observed he never gave an opinion on any subject, and never told an anecdote. Indeed, he would sometimes remark, when a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.
Lord Beaconsfield, Lothair.
OU cannot eat breakfast all day,
Nor is it the act of a sinner,
When breakfast is taken away,
To turn your attention to dinner;
And it's not in the range of belief,
That you could hold him as a glutton,
Who, when he is tired of beef,
Determines to tackle the mutton.
Defendant, in W. S. Gilbert's Trial by Jury. ”

“ Being in the middle of an anecdote to his neighbour, he mechanically held out his hand towards the tray, but, as people often do when they are thinking of something else, he did not take a glass. The boy thought he was hesitating which liqueur he would have, and, like a good fellow, wishing to help his master, he pointed to one particular glass, and whispered, "That's the biggest, sir."
Frederick Locker, Patchwork.
LL men are equal, the Frenchman says;
Most men will gladly receive
What a fervid fool, with a flattering phrase,
Tricks out for fools to believe ”

“ HEY have queer hotels in Oregon. I remember one where they gave me a bag of oats for a pillow. I had night mares, of course.
C. F. Browne, Artemus Ward's Lecture.
HE man who would Charybdis shun
Must make a cautious movement,
Or else he'll into Scylla run—
Which would be no improvement.
The fish that left the frying-pan,
On feeling that desire, sir,
Took little by their change of plan,
When floundering in the fire, sir.
Lord Neaves, Songs and Verses.
HE flattery which is most pleasing to really beautiful or decidedly ugly women is that which is addressed to the intellect. ”

“ Y old fellow-traveller in Germany, himself an Irishman, being on the box of an Irish mail-coach on a very cold day, and observing the driver enveloping his neck in the voluminous folds of an ample "comforter," remarked, "You seem to be taking very good care of yourself, my friend." "Och, to be shure I am, sir," answered the driver; "what's all the world to a man when his wife's a widdy?" ”