The shortest way out of Manchester is notoriously a bottle of Gordon's gin; out of any businessman's life there is the mirage of P...aris; out of Paris, or mediocrity of talent and imagination, there are all the drugs, from subtle, all-conquering opium to cheating, cozening cocaine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and arduous specialisations of the imagination. On the one hand there is t...he hostility of God and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dubliners, strictly speaking, are my fellow-countrymen, but I don't care to speak of our "dear, dirty Dublin" as they do. Dubliner...s are the most hopeless, useless and inconsistent race of charlatans I have ever come across, on the island or the continent. This is why the English Parliament is full of the greatest windbags in the world. The Dubliner passes his time gabbing and making the rounds in bars or taverns or cathouses, without every getting 'fed up' with the double doses of whiskey and Home Rule, and at night, when he can hold no more and is swollen up with poison like a toad, he staggers from the side- door and, guided by an instinctive desire for stability along the straight line of the houses, he goes slithering his backside against all walls and corners. He goes "arsing along" as we say in English. There's the Dubliner for you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And in spite of everything, Ireland remains the brain of the Kingdom. The English, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish th...e over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget--the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a friend, then, indulges in the joy of unburdening a secret on to another friend's bosom, he makes the latter, in his turn, f...eel the urge to taste the same joy himself. He implores him, it is true, not to tell a soul; but if such a condition were taken absolutely literally, it would at once cut off the flow of these joys at their very source. The general practice is for the secret to be confided only to an equally trustworthy friend, the same conditions being imposed on him. And so from trustworthy friend to trustworthy friend the secret goes moving on round that immense chain, until finally it reaches the ears of just the very person or persons whom the first talker had expressly intended it never should reach.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »