Jerzy

“Child,” said the Sand-fairy sleepily, “I can only advise you to think before you speak” –
“But I thought that you never give advice.”
“That piece doesn’t count,” it said. “You’ll never take it! Besides, it’s not original. It’s in all the copy-books.”
― E. Nesbit, Five Children and It

“Do you understand what’s going on here?”
Hodgesaargh took another slow look at the scene. “No,” he said.
“In that case’s not my job to understand this sort of thing,” said the falconer. “I wasn’t trained. Probably takes a lot of training, understanding this. That’s your job. And her job. Can you understand what’s going on when a bird’s been trained and’ll make a kill and still came back to the wrist?”
“Well, no—”
“There you are, then. So that’s all right. Cup of tea, was it?”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

“When confronted with their fruitless ways, binge writers often proffer a self-defeating dispositional attribution: "I'm just not the kind of person who's good at making a schedule and sticking to it." This is nonsense, of course. People like dispositional explanations when they don't want to change [...]”
― Paul J. Silvia, How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing

“For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.”
― E. Nesbit, Five Children and It