The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Jerome K. Jerome wrote these essays in an era when people still had the luxury to contemplate the proper way to do nothing. The result is a delightful parade of trivial dilemmas: should you wear the grey dress or the red one? Is it worse to be early or late? Why does a train always depart the moment you step into the corridor? These are not essays about anything important. That's precisely the point. Jerome transforms the small anxieties and indecisions of daily existence into comedy that feels startlingly contemporary. His narrator is the archetypal everyman, agonising over questions no one admits to caring about, then confessing it all with disarming honesty. The prose has the quality of a clever friend holding forth in a comfortable chair, making you laugh at recognisable follies you didn't know deserved laughter. Nearly 130 years later, it remains the perfect book for anyone who suspects that life is mostly spent worrying about things that don't matter, and that this is somehow the most human thing of all.
Editions
X-Ray
“Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“We want everything. All the happiness that earth and heaven are capable of bestowing. Creature comforts, and heart and soul comforts also; and, proud-spirited beings that we are, we will not be put off with a part. Give us only everything, and we will be content. And, after all, Cinderella, you have had your day. Some little dogs never get theirs. You must not be greedy. You have KNOWN happiness. The palace was Paradise for those few months, and the Prince's arms were about you, Cinderella, the Prince's kisses on your lips; the gods themselves cannot take THAT from you.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“One of the problems of social life is to know what to say to one another when we meet; every man and woman's desire is to appear sympathetic and clever, and this makes conversation difficult, because, taking us all round, we are neither sympathetic nor clever.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“One example of a solid but inexplicable fact, ruling all human affairs - your fireworks won't go off while the crowd is around.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
“In my youth, the question chiefly important to me was”
— Jerome K. Jerome
“To be amiable and cheerful is a good religion for a work-a-day world. We are so busy not killing, not stealing, not coveting our neighbour's wife, we have not the time to be even just to one another for the little while we are together here.””
— Jerome K. Jerome
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Jerome, Jerome K.. The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839.Jerome, J. K. (n.d.). The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839Jerome, Jerome K.. The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-second-thoughts-of-an-idle-fellow-36c683a0-61f8-4149-a8a9-1325438ab839.
