Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow Quotes

“Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“It is so pleasant to come across people more stupid than ourselves. We love them at once for being so.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“If there is one person I do despise more than another, it is the man who does not think exactly the same on all topics as I do...”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“I like idling when I ought not to be idling; not when it is the only thing I have to do. Thatis my pig-headed nature. The time when I like best to stand with my back to the fire, calculating how much I owe, is when my desk is heaped highest with letters that must be answered by the next post. When I like to dawdle longest over my dinner is when I have a heavy evening's work before me. And if, for some urgent reason, I ought to be up particularly early in the morning, it is then, more than at any other time, that I love to lie an extra half-hour in bed.

Ah! how delicious it is to turn over and go to sleep again: "just for
five minutes." Is there any human being, I wonder, besides the hero of
a Sunday-school "tale for boys," who ever gets up willingly?”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Idling has always been my strong point.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“To be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on every occasion; and whatever impression he endeavors to create, he is sure to convey its opposite.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“إنا لا نصاب بالحب مرتين. إن كيوبيد لا يطلق سهمين على نفس القلب. وصيفات الحب هن صديقات العمر: الإحترام والإعجاب والحنان، أما مولاهن العلوي في موكبه الملكي فلا يزورنا إلا مرة يمضي بعدها. فقد نميل إلى شخص، وقد نتعلق بشخص، وقد نولع بهذا أو ذاك، لكنا لا نحب مرة ثانية، إن الحب كالألعاب النارية لا يومض في السماء إلا مرة.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“اننى أحب الكسل عندما لا يصح أن أكون كسولا ، لا عندما يكون الكسل هو الشئ الوحيد أمامى”
― جيروم ك. جيروم, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Swearing relieves the feelings - that is what swearing does. I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her. She said I had no business to have such feelings.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal. Because if you don't you won't get any.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Young ladies take their notions of our sex from the novels written by their own, and compared with the monstrosities that masquerade for men in the pages of that nightmare literature, Phytagoras' plucked bird and Frankenstein's demon were fair average specimens of humanity.

In these so-called books, the chief lover, or Greek god, as he is admiringly referred to -by the way, they do not say which "Greek god" it is that the gentleman bears such a striking likeness to; it might be hump-backed Vulcan, or double-faced Janus, or even driveling Silenus. He resembles the whole family of them, however, in being a blackguard, and perhaps this is what is meant.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Ambition is only vanity ennobled.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“The truth is, we each of us have an inborn conviction that the whole world with everybody and everything in it, was created as a sort of necessary appendage to ourselves.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“وحدى أنا الآن الطريق مظلم مظلم أتعثر لا أعرف كيف و لا أهتم
الطريق على ما يبدو يقود إلى لا مكان ، ليس ثمة ضوء يرشدنى
لكن الصباح جاء أخيرا جاء ووجدت انى كبرت و أصبحت نفسى”
― جيروم ك. جيروم, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Speak truth, and right will take care of itself.”
― Jerome K. Jerome‏, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“I look in the glass sometimes at my two long, cylindrical bags (so picturesquely rugged about the knees), my stand-up collar and billycock hat, and wonder what right I have to go about making God's world hideous. Then wild and wicked thoughts come into my heart. I don't want to be good and respectable. (I never can be sensible, I'm told; so that don't matter.) I want to put on lavender-colored tights, with red velvet breeches and a green doublet slashed with yellow; to have a light-blue silk cloak on my shoulder, and a black eagle's plume waving from my hat, and a big sword, and a falcon, and a lance, and a prancing horse, so that I might go about and gladden the eyes of the people. Why should we all try to look like ants crawling over a dust-heap? Why shouldn't we dress a little gayly? I am sure if we did we should be happier. True, it is a little thing, but we are a little race, and what is the use of our pretending otherwise and spoiling fun? Let philosophers get themselves up like old crows if they like. But let me be a butterfly.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Yet there is no gainsaying but that it must have been somewhat sweeter in that dewy morning of creation, when it was young and fresh, when the feet of the tramping millions had not trodden its grass to dust, nor the din of the myriad cities chased the silence forever away. Life must have been noble and solemn to those free-footed, loose-robed fathers of the human race, walking hand in hand with God under the great sky. They lived in sunkissed tents amid the lowing herds. They took their simple wants from the loving hand of Nature. They toiled and talked and thought; and the great earth rolled around in stillness, not yet laden with trouble and wrong. Those days are past now. The quiet childhood of Humanity, spent in the far-off forest glades and by the murmuring rivers, is gone forever; and human life is deepening down to manhood amid tumult, doubt, and hope. Its age of restful peace is past. It has its work to finish and must hasten on. What that work may be—what this world's share is in the great design—we know not, though our unconscious hands are helping to accomplish it. Like the tiny coral insect working deep under the dark waters, we strive and struggle each for our own little ends, nor dream of the vast fabric we are building up for God.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“To tell you the truth - mind, this is strictly between ourselves, please; I shouldn't like your wife to know I said it - the women folk don't understand these things; but between you and me, you know, I think it does a man good to swear.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. Also like the measles, we take it only once. One never need be afraid of catching it a second time.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“I do like cats. They are so unconsciously amusing. There is such a comic dignity about them, such a "How dare you!" "Go away, don't touch me" sort of air.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“يا أيها الززمن ادفع بيديك هذة الذكريات المرة عن قلوبنا المثقلة بالهموم”
― جيروم ك. جيروم, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“It must be eight years since I last saw Joseph Taboys. How pleasant it would be to meet his jovial face again, to clasp his strong hand, and to hear his cheery laugh once more! He owes me 14 shillings, too.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“По океана на Живота всеки трябва сам да направлява кормилото си; никой не може да ни помогне и да ни даде съвет, защото никой не знае, нито е знаел пътя на тази безбрежна шир. Защото океанът на Живота е много дълбок и никой човек не познава силните течения под неговата слънчева повърхност.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“A vida funciona segundo o princípio dos pratos da balança, e a felicidade que alcançamos numa vertente da vida perdemos na vertente contrária. À medida que as nossas posses aumentam, o mesmo sucede com os nossos desejos; e estamos sempre a meio caminho entre aquelas e estes. Quando residimos numas águas-furtadas, ficamos felizes ao saborear uma ceia de peixe-frito com cerveja preta. Quando moramos num primeiro andar, só um jantar requintado no Continental nos pode proporcionar a mesma satisfação.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow