Quotes by William Crooke

“I have walked by stalls in the market-place where books, dog-eared and faded from their purple, have burst with a white hosanna. I have seen people crowned with a double crown, holding in either hand the crook and flail, the power and the glory. I have understood how the scar be­comes a star, I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal. My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer over my shoulder.””

“I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.Indeed, 'tis true that Henry told me of;For I have often heard my mother sayI came into the world with my legs forward:Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste,And seek their ruin that usurp'd our right?The midwife wonder'd and the women cried'O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!'And so I was; which plainly signifiedThat I should snarl and bite and play the dog.Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so,Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.I have no brother, I am like no brother;And this word 'love,' which graybeards call divine,Be resident in men like one anotherAnd not in me: I am myself alone.””

“You shall markMany a duteous and knee-crooking knaveThat, doting on his own obsequious bondage,Wears out his time, much like his master's ass,For nought but provender; and when he's old, cashier'd:Whip me such honest knaves.””

“road so crooked it could run for the legislature,””

“Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses!””

“If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Think of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words”

“...seeing as he sat down on the log the crooked print, the warped indentation in the wet ground which while he looked at it continued to fill with water until it was level full and the water began to overflow and the sides of the print began to dissolve away. Even as he looked up he saw the next one, and, moving, the one beyond it; moving, not hurrying, running, but merely keeping pace with them as they appeared before him as though they were being shaped out of thin air just one constant pace short of where he would lose them forever and be lost forever himself, tireless, eager, without doubt or dread, panting a little above the strong rapid little hammer of his heart, emerging suddenly into a little glade and the wilderness coalesced. It rushed, soundless, and solidified––the tree, the bush, the compass and the watch glinting where a ray of sunlight touched them. Then he saw the bear. It did not emerge, appear: it was just there, immobile, fixed in the green and windless noon's hot dappling, not as big as he had dreamed it but as big as he had expected, bigger, dimensionless against the dappled obscurity, looking at him.””

“Most people when they’re in love invent every kind of reason to persuade themselves that it’s only sensible to do what they want. I suppose that’s why there are so many disastrous marriages. They are like those who put their affairs in the hands of someone they know to be a crook, but who happens to be an intimate friend because, unwilling to believe that a crook is a crook first and a friend afterward, they are convinced that, however dishonest he may be with others, he won’t be so with them.Maugham, W. Somerset (2011-01-26). The Razor's Edge (Vintage International) (p. 78). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.””