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THE WORKS OF GILBERT PARKER

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A human life he held to be a trifle in
the big sum of time

A heart-break for that kind is their
salvation

A man may be forgiven for a sin, but
the effect remains

A look too bright for joy, too intense
for despair

A sort of chuckle not entirely pleasant

A man you could bank on, and draw your
interest reg'lar

A left-handed boy is all right in the
world

A cloak of words to cover up the real
thought behind

Aboriginal in all of us, who must have
a sign for an emotion

Aboriginal dispersion

Adaptability was his greatest weapon in
life

Advantage to live where nothing was
required of her but truth

After which comes steady happiness or
the devil to pay (wedding)

Agony in thinking about the things
we're never going to do

Ah, let it be soon!  Ah, let him die
soon!

Air of certainty and universal
comprehension

All humour in him had a strain of the
sardonic

All genius is at once a blessing or a
curse

All the world's mad but thee and me

All men are worse than most women

All is fair where all is foul

All he has to do is to be vague, and
look prodigious (Scientist)

All are hurt some time

Always hoping the best from the worst
of us

Always calling to something, for
something outside ourselves

An inner sorrow is a consuming fire

And even envy praised her

Anger was the least injurious of all
grounds for separation

Answered, with the indifference of
despair

Antipathy of the lesser to the greater
nature

Antipathy of the man in the wrong to
the man in the right

As if our penalties were only paid by
ourselves!

At first—and at the last—he was kind

Ate some coffee-beans and drank some
cold water

Audience that patronisingly listens
outside a room or window

Awkward for your friends and gratifying
to your enemies

Babbling covers a lot of secrets

Bad turns good sometimes, when you know
the how

Begin to see how near good is to evil

Beginning of a lifetime of experience,
comedy, and tragedy

Being tired you can sleep, and in sleep
you can forget

Being generous with other people's
money

Being young, she exaggerated the
importance of the event

Being a man of very few ideas, he
cherished those he had

Beneath it all there was a little touch
of ridicule

Boldness without rashness, and hope
without vain thinking

But I don't think it is worth doing
twice

But to pay the vulgar penalty of
prison—ah!

But a wounded spirit who can bear

But the years go on, and friends have
an end

Came of a race who set great store by
mothers and grandmothers

Carrying with him the warm atmosphere
of a good woman's love

Cherish any alleviating lie

Clever men are trying

Cling to beliefs long after conviction
has been shattered

Confidence in a weak world gets
unearned profit often

Conquest not important enough to
satisfy ambition

Counsel of the overwise to go jolting
through the soul

Courage which awaits the worst the
world can do

Courage; without which, men are as the
standing straw

Credulity, easily transmutable into
superstition

Damnable propinquity

Dangerous man, as all enthusiasts are

Death is not the worst of evils

Death is a magnificent ally; it
untangles knots

Delicate revenge which hath its hour
with every man

Did not let him think that she was
giving up anything for him

Do what you feel you've got to do, and
never mind what happens

Does any human being know what he can
bear of temptation

Don't go at a fence till you're sure of
your seat

Don't be a bigger fool than there's any
need to be

Don't be too honest

Down in her heart, loves to be mastered

Duplicity, for which she might never
have to ask forgiveness

Each of us will prove himself a fool
given perfect opportunity

Egotism with which all are diseased

Egregious egotism of young love there
are only two identities

Engrossed more, it seemed, in the
malady than in the man

Enjoy his own generosity

Even bad company's better than no
company at all

Every true woman is a mother, though
she have no child

Every man should have laws of his own

Every shot that kills ricochets

Evil is half-accidental, half-natural

Face flushed with a sort of pleasurable
defiance

Fascinating colour which makes evil
appear to be good

Fear a woman are when she hates, and
when she loves

Fear of one's own wife is the worst
fear in the world

Flood came which sweeps away the rust
that gathers in the eyes

Follow me; if I retreat, kill me; if I
fall, avenge me

For a man having work to do, woman,
lovely woman, is rocks

Freedom is the first essential of the
artistic mind

Frenchman, volatile, moody, chivalrous,
unreasonable

Frenchman,  slave of ideas, the victim
of sentiment

Friendship means a giving and a getting

Futility of goodness, the futility of
all

Future of those who will not see,
because to see is to suffer

Good fathers think they have good
daughters

Good is often an occasion more than a
condition

Good thing for a man himself to be owed
kindness

Grove of pines to give a sense of
warmth in winter

Grow more intense, more convinced, more
thorough, as they talk

Had the luck together, all kinds and
all weathers

Had the slight flavour of the superior
and the paternal

Had got unreasonably old

Have not we all something to hide—with
or without shame?

Have you ever felt the hand of your own
child in yours

He had neither self-consciousness nor
fear

He admired, yet he wished to be admired

He hated irony in anyone else

He was not always sorry when his
teasing hurt

He felt things, he did not study them

He was in fact not a philosopher, but a
sentimentalist

He had only made of his wife an
incident in his life

He didn't always side with the majority

He does not love Pierre; but he does
not pretend to love him

He was strong enough to admit ignorance

He has wheeled his nuptial bed into the
street

He had had acquaintances, but never
friendships, and never loves

He had no instinct for vice in the name
of amusement

He left his fellow-citizens very much
alone

He never saw an insult unless he
intended to avenge it

He had tasted freedom; he was near to
license

He borrowed no trouble

He wishes to be rude to some one, and
is disappointed

He's a barber-shop philosopher

Heaven where wives without number
awaited him

Her sight was bounded by the little
field where she strayed

Her voice had the steadiness of despair

Her stronger soul ruled him without his
knowledge

Her own suffering always set her
laughing at herself

Highsterics, they call it

His courtesy was not on the same
expansive level as his vanity

His duties were many, or he made them
so

His gift for lying was inexpressible

Honesty was a thing he greatly
desired—in others

How little we can know to-day what we
shall feel tomorrow

How can one force one's heart?  No, no!
One has to wait

How many sons have ever added to their
father's fame?

How many conquests have been made in
the name of God

How can you judge the facts if you
don't know the feeling?

Hugging the chain of denial to his
bosom

Hunger for happiness is robbery

I love that love in which I married him

I was never good at catechism

I said I was not falling in love—I am
in love

I am only myself when I am drunk

I have a good memory for forgetting

I don't wish to fit in; things must fit
me

I like when I like, and I like a lot
when I like

I always did what was wrong, and liked
it—nearly always

I should remember to forget it

I don't believe in walking just for the
sake of walking

I don't think.  I'm old enough to know

I can't pay you for your kindness to
me, and I don't want to

I had to listen to him, and he had to
pay me for listening

I was born insolent

I—couldn't help it

If you have a good thought, act on it

If one remembers, why should the other
forget

If women hadn't memory, she answered,
they wouldn't have much

If fumbling human fingers do not meddle
with it

Illusive hopes and irresponsible
deceptions

Imagination is at the root of much that
passes for love

Importunity with discretion was his
motto

In all secrets there is a kind of guilt

In her heart she never can defy the
world as does a man

Inclined to resent his own
insignificance

Instinct for detecting veracity, having
practised on both sides

Interfere with people who had a trade
and didn't understand it

Irishmen have gifts for only two
things—words and women

Is the habit of good living mere habit
and mere acting

It is hard to be polite to cowards

It is not Justice that fills the gaols,
but Law

It is not the broken heart that kills,
but broken pride

It is good to live, isn't it?

It is difficult to be idle—and
important too

It is not much to kill or to die—that
is in the game

It isn't what they do, it's what they
don't do

It ain't for us to say what we're goin'
to be, not always

It is easy to repent when our pleasures
have palled

It's the people who try to be clever
who never are

It's no good simply going—you've got
to go somewhere

Jews everywhere treated worse than the
Chinaman

Joy of a confessional which relieves
the sick heart

Kissed her twice on the cheek—the
first time in fifteen years

Knew the lie of silence to be as evil
as the lie of speech

Knew when to shut his eyes, and when to
keep them open

Know how bad are you, and doesn't mind

Knowing that his face would never be
turned from me

Lacks a balance-wheel.  He has brains,
but not enough

Law.  It is expensive whether you win
or lose

Learned what fools we mortals be

Learned, as we all must learn, that we
live our dark hour alone

Let others ride to glory, I'll shoe
their horses for the gallop

Liars all men may be, but that's wid
wimmin or landlords

Life is only futile to the futile

Lighted candles in hollowed pumpkins

Likenesses between the perfectly human
and the perfectly animal

Lilt of existence lulling to sleep
wisdom and tried experience

Liquor makes me human

Live and let live is doing good

Lonely we come into the world, and
lonely we go out of it

Longed to touch, oftener than they did,
the hands of children

Lose their heads, and be so absurdly
earnest

Love can outlive slander

Love, too, is a game, and needs playing

Love knows not distance; it hath no
continent

Love has nothing  to do with ugliness
or beauty, or fortune

Lyrical in his enthusiasms

Man who tells the story in a new way,
that is genius

Man grows old only by what he suffers,
and what he forgives

Man or woman must not expect too much
out of life

May be more beautiful in uncertain
England than anywhere else

Meditation is the enemy of action

Memory is man's greatest friend and
worst enemy

Men and women are unwittingly their own
executioners

Men feel surer of women than women feel
of men

Men do not steal up here: that is the
unpardonable crime

Men must have their bad hours alone

Men are like dogs—they worship him who
beats them

Men are shy with each other where their
emotions are in play

Miseries of this world are caused by
forcing issues

Missed being a genius by an inch

Monotonously intelligent

More idle than wicked

Most honest thing I ever heard, but
it's not the most truthful

Most important lessons of life—never
to quarrel with a woman

Mothers always forgive

My excuses were making bad infernally
worse

Mystery is dear to a woman's heart

Nature twists in back, or  anywhere,
gets a twist in's brain too

Nervous legs at a gallop

Never believed that when man or woman
said no that no was meant

Never looked to get an immense amount
of happiness out of life

Never to be content with superficial
reasons and the obvious

Never give up your soul to things only,
keep it for people

No note of praise could be pitched too
high for Elizabeth

No, I'm not good—I'm only beautiful

No news—no trouble

No virtue in not falling, when you're
not tempted

No past that is hidden has ever been a
happy past

No man so simply sincere, or so
extraordinarily prejudiced

Noise is not battle

Not good to have one thing in the head
all the time

Not content to do even the smallest
thing ill

Not to show surprise at anything

Nothing so good as courage, nothing so
base as the shifting eye

Nothing is futile that is right

Nothing so popular for the moment as
the fall of a favourite

Of those who hypnotize themselves, who
glow with self-creation

Of course I've hated, or I wouldn't be
worth a button

Often called an invention of the devil
(Violin)

Often, we would rather be hurt than
hurt

One does the work and another gets paid

One always buys back the past at a
tremendous price

One doesn't choose to worry

One favour is always the promise of
another

Only the supremely wise or the deeply
ignorant who never alter

Oriental would think not less of him
for dissimulation

Paradoxes which make for laughter—and
for tears

Passion to forget themselves

Pathetically  in earnest

People who are clever never think of
trying to be

Philosophers are often stupid in human
affairs

Philosophy which could separate the
petty from the prodigious

Political virtue goes unrewarded

Prepared for a kiss this hour and a
reproach the next

Preserved a marked unconsciousness

Protest that it is right when it knows
that it is wrong

Put the matter on your own hearthstone

Queer that things which hurt most can't
be punished by law

Rack of secrecy, the cruelest
inquisition of life

Reading a lot and forgetting everything

Reconciling the preacher and the
sinner, as many another has

Religion to him was a dull recreation
invented chiefly for women

Remember the sorrow of thine own wife

Remember your own sins before you
charge others

Rewarded for its mistakes

Romance is an incident to a man

Sacrifice to the god of the pin-hole

Sardonic pleasure in the miseries of
the world

Saw how futile was much competition

Saying uncomfortable things in a
deferential way

Scoundrel, too weak to face the
consequences of his sin

Secret of life: to keep your own
commandments

Self-will, self-pride, and
self-righteousness were big in him

She lacked sense a little and
sensitiveness much

She was not to be forced to answer his
arguments directly

She knew what to say and what to leave
unsaid

She was beginning to understand that
evil is not absolute

She valued what others found useless

She wasn't young, but she seemed so

She had not suffered that sickness,
social artifice

She had provoked love, but had never
given it

She had never stooped to conquer

Should not make our own personal
experience a law unto the world

Shure, if we could always be 'about the
same,' we'd do

Simply to have death renewed every
morning

Slander ever scorches where it touches

Slow-footed hours wandered by, leaving
apathy in their train

Smiling was part of his equipment

So say your prayers, believe all you
can, don't ask questions

Solitude fixes our hearts immovably on
things

Some people are rough with the
poor—and proud

Some wise men are fools, one way or
another

Some are hurt in one way and some in
another

Sometimes the longest way round is the
shortest way home

Soul tortured through different degrees
of misunderstanding

Spurting out little geysers of other
people's cheap wisdom

Still the end of your existence, I
rejoined—to be amused?

Strike first and heal after—"a kick
and a lick"

Struggle of conscience and expediency

Surely she might weep a little for
herself

Suspicion, the bane of sick old age

Sympathy, with curiousness in their
eyes and as much inhumanity

Sympathy and consolation might be much
misplaced

Thanked him in her heart for the things
he had left unsaid

That anxious civility which beauty can
inspire

That iceberg which most mourners carry
in their breasts

That he will find the room empty where
I am not

The Government cherish the Injin much
in these days

The Injin speaks the truth,
perhaps—eye of red man multiplies

The blind tyranny of the just

The soul of goodness in things evil

The higher we go the faster we live

The gods made last to humble the pride
of men—there was rum

The world never welcomes its deserters

The furious music of death and war was
over

The tender care of a woman—than many
pharmacopoeias

The beginning of the end of things was
come for him

The ravings of a sick man are not
always counted ravings

The friendship of man is like the shade
of the acacia

The sea is a great breeder of
friendship

The vague pain of suffered indifference

The soul is a great traveller

The happy scene of the play before the
villain comes in

The threshold of an acknowledged love

The Barracks of the Free

The real business of life is trying to
understand each other

The world is not so bad as is claimed
for it

The temerity and nonchalance of despair

There is nothing so tragic as the
formal

There are things we repent of which
cannot be repaired

There is something humiliating in even
an undeserved injury

There should be written the one word,
"Wait"

There is no refuge from memory and
remorse in this world

There was never a grey wind but there's
a greyer

There is no influence like the
influence of habit

There is no habit so powerful as the
habit of care of others

There's no credit in not doing what you
don't want to do

These little pieces of art make life
possible

They think that if a vote's worth
having it's worth paying for

They whose tragedy lies in the capacity
to suffer greatly

Things in life git stronger than we are

Things that once charmed charm less

Think with the minds of twelve men, and
the heart of one woman

Think that a woman gives the heart for
pleasant weather only?

Think of our position

Thou wouldst not think how ill all's
here about my heart

Time when she should and when she
should not be wooed

Time is the test, and Time will have
its way with me

Time a woman most yearns for a man is
when she has refused him

To die without whining

To be popular is not necessarily to be
contemptible

To sorrow may their humour be a foil

To-morrow is no man's gift

Touch of the fantastic, of the
barbaric, in all genius

Training in the charms of
superficiality

Tricks played by Fact to discredit the
imagination

Triumph of Oriental duplicity over
Western civilisation

Truth waits long, but whips hard

Tyranny of the little man, given a
power

Undisciplined generosity

Untamed by the normal restraints of a
happy married life

Uses up your misery and makes you tired
(Work)

Vanity is the bane of mankind

Vanity of successful labour

Vanity; and from this much feminine
hatred springs

Very severe on those who do not pretend
to be good

Visions of the artistic
temperament—delight and curse

War is cruelty, and none can make it
gentle

Was not civilisation a mistake

We don't live in months and years, but
just in minutes

We want to get more out of life than
there really is in it

We want every land to do as we do; and
we want to make 'em do it

We grow away from people against our
will

We are only children till we begin to
make our dreams our life

We care so little for real justice

We do what we forbid ourselves to do

We suffer the shames we damn in others

We must live our dark hours alone

We speak with the straight tongue; it
is cowards who lie

We'll lave the past behind us

What fools there are in the world

What is gone is gone.  Graves are
idolatry

What is crime in one country, is virtue
in another

What a nice mob you press fellows
are—wholesale scavengers

What'll be the differ a hundred years
from now

Whatever has been was a dream; whatever
is now is real

When a child is born the mother also is
born again

When you strike your camp, put out the
fires

When God permits, shall man despair?

When a man laugh in the sun and think
nothing of evil

Where the light is darkness

Where I should never hear the voice of
the social Thou must

Who knows!

Who can understand a woman?

Who get a morbid enjoyment out of
misery

Who say 'God bless you' in New York!
They say 'Damn you!'

Who never knew self-consciousness

Wit is always at the elbow of want

Without the money brains seldom win
alone

Woman's deepest right and joy and pain
in one—to comfort

Women only admitted to Heaven by the
intercession of husbands

Women are half saints, half fools

Women may leave you in the bright days

Women don't go by evidence, but by
their feelings

World was only the size of four walls
to a sick person

Worth while to have lived so long and
to have seen so much

Would look back and not remember that
she had a childhood

You went north towards heaven and south
towards hell

You have lost your illusions

You never can really overtake a
newspaper lie

You can't take time as the measure of
life

You cannot live long enough to atone
for that impertinence

You do not shout dinner till you have
your knife in the loaf

You never can make a scandal less by
trying to hide it

You've got blind rashness, and so you
think you're bold

You've got to be ready, that's all

You—you all were so ready to suspect

Youth hungers for the vanities

Youth is the only comrade for youth

Youth's a dream, middle age a delusion,
old age a mistake

Click on this line to go to the Index for all Parker's works.

These quotations were collected from the works of the author by David Widger while preparing etexts for Project Gutenberg. Comments and suggestions will be most welcome.