Schoolboys Quotes

Mexican marijuana, which he called the schoolboy's consolation. ~ James Purdy

Rome was not the first state of organized gangsterdom, nor was it the last; but it was the only one that managed to bamboozle posterity into an almost universal admiration. Few rational men admire the Huns, the Nazis or the Soviets; but for centuries, schoolboys have been expected to read Julius Caesar's militaristic drivel ("We inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy, our own casualties being very light") and Cato's revolting incitements to war. They have been led to believe that the Romans had attained an advanced level in the sciences, the arts, law, architecture, engineering and everything else. It is my opinion that the alleged Roman achievements are largely a myth; and I feel it is time for this myth to be debunked a little. What the Romans excelled in was bullying, bludgeoning, butchering and blood baths. Like the Soviet Empire, the Roman Empire enslaved peoples whose cultural level was far above their own. They not only ruthlessly vandalized their countries, but they also looted them, stealing their art treasures, abducting their scientists and copying their technical know-how, which the Romans' barren society was rarely able to improve on. No wonder, then, that Rome was filled with great works of art. But the light of culture which Rome is supposed to have emanated was a borrowed light: borrowed from the Greeks and the other peoples that the Roman militarists had enslaved. ~ Petr Beckmann

Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings:

'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan.

To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power.

Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist.

The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within.

But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water.

And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle.

Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled.

But I tell you, Kind R ~ Bailey Bristol

The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about cats.
(From a schoolboy's essay, 1903.) ~ Helen Exley

He sat there, the master, the artist who had achieved his dignity, the author of "A Wretched Man," who, employing a form of exemplary purity, had renounced bohemianism and the dismal chasm, had broken with the abyss and reviled all vileness. He had risen high, transcending his knowledge and outgrowing all irony, he had adjusted his responsibilities toward the public and its trust in him-he, whose fame was official, whose name was ennobled, and whose style was a model for schoolboys. ~ Thomas Mann

Why Banning Miller, what a vision you are in your fine dress. Must've taken a dozen slaves a dozen days to get you into that getup. 'Course, your daddy tells me it takes the space of a schoolboy's wink to get you out of it again. ~ Jane Espenson

The poet Robert Browning caused considerable consternation by including the word twat in one of his poems, thinking it an innocent term. The work was Pippa Passes, written in 1841 and now remembered for the line "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world." But it also contains this disconcerting passage:
Then owls and bats
Cowls and twats
Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!
Browning had apparently somewhere come across the word twat
which meant precisely the same then as it does now
but pronounced it with a flat a and somehow took it to mean a piece of headgear for nuns. The verse became a source of twittering amusement for generations of schoolboys and a perennial embarrassment to their elders, but the word was never altered and Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining his mistake to him. ~ Bill Bryson

Walter looked about him lingeringly and lovingly. This spot had always been so dear to him. What fun they all had had here lang syne. Phantoms of memory seemed to pace the dappled paths and peep merrily through the swinging boughs–Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys, fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy, sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance–the old Walter that had been himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces of fancy. They were all there around him–he could see them almost as plainly as he saw Rilla–as plainly as he had once seen the Pied Piper piping down the valley in a vanished twilight. And they said to him, those gay little ghosts of other days, "We were the children of yesterday, Walter–fight a good fight for the children of today and tomorrow. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Do you know that line of Kierkegaard's, Canon Chambers? "There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys: they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked the sum out for themselves." ~ James Runcie

An intelligent man is one who is capable of taking in knowledge until the natural limits of the species are reached.. A stupid man is one whose progress is arrested at some specific time and place before then. There thus appears in psychology - and the next instant in politics - the concept of the unteachable. Some men can learn almost indefinitely; their capacity goes on increasing until their bodies begin to wear out. Others stop in childhood, even in infancy. They reach, say , the mental age of ten or twelve, and then they develop no more. Physically, they become men, and sprout beards, political delusions, and the desire to propagate their kind. But mentally they remain on the level of schoolboys. ~ H.L. Mencken

In Astrology, the moon, among its other meanings, has that of "the common people," who submit (they know not why) to any independent will that can express itself with sufficient energy. The people who guillotined the mild Louis XVI died gladly for Napoleon. The impossibility of an actual democracy is due to this fact of mob-psychology. As soon as you group men, they lose their personalities. A parliament of the wisest and strongest men in the nation is liable to behave like a set of schoolboys, tearing up their desks and throwing their inkpots at each other. The only possibility of co-operation lies in discipline and autocracy, which men have sometimes established in the name of equal rights. ~ Aleister Crowley

A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian philosophers were after - and their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like schoolboys. ~ T. S. Eliot

The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit. ~ Tom Petty

Well, I must do't. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot's spirit! My throat of war be turn'd, Which quier'd with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees, Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv'd an alms! I will not do't, Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body's action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. ~ William Shakespeare

Pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Schoolboys are a merciless race, individually they are angels, but together, especially in schools, they are often merciless. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness , dear, my happiness will remain,in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal's black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

[Ulysses] appears to have been written by a perverted lunatic who has made a speciality of the literature of the latrine… I have no stomach for Ulysses… James Joyce is a writer of talent, but in Ulysses he has ruled out all the elementary decencies of life and dwells appreciatively on things that sniggering louts of schoolboys guffaw about. In addition to this stupid glorification of mere filth, the book suffers from being written in the manner of a demented George Meredith. There are whole chapters of it without any punctuation or other guide to what the writer is really getting at. Two-thirds of it is incoherent, and the passages that are plainly written are devoid of wit, displaying only a coarse salacrity intended for humour. ~ Aramis

Once outside, the detectives advanced up an escalator and to a floor with two elevators. One was labeled for the staff, and the other for guests. In the corner was a plain grey door which led up a staircase.
"Monsieur Leor ... " Jean began. "Are you up for a challenge?"
"You want to run up the staircase." Leor concluded, plainly. "Like schoolboys?"
"Ouais, monsieur," Jean replied, with a silly grin. "You can consider it your preliminary training, if that helps your dignity. ~ Zechariah Barrett

A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour! ~ Lord Byron

Gasps erupted from his nostrils like grouse from a thicket, schoolboys onto a recess yard, grease spatters from frying bacon. ~ Dennis Vickers

I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that paederastic passions among schoolboys 'do no harm'; further, I think them the only redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools. ~ Aleister Crowley

About midnight excited hails were heard from a boat about a couple of miles out at sea to the southeast of Sidmouth, and a lantern was seen waving in a strange manner to and fro and up and down. The nearer boats at once hurried towards the alarm. The adventuresome occupants of the boat, a seaman, a curate, and two schoolboys, had actually seen the monsters passing under their boat. The creatures, it seems, like most deep-sea organisms, were phosphorescent, and they had been floating, five fathoms deep or so, like creatures of moonshine through the blackness of the water, their tentacles retracted and as if asleep, rolling over and over, and moving slowly in a wedge-like formation towards the southeast. ~ H.G.Wells

The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life. ~ Thomas Jefferson

To shrink back from all that can be called Nature into negative spirituality is as if we ran away from horses instead of learning to ride. There is in our present pilgrim condition plenty of room (more room than most of us like) for abstinence and renunciation and mortifying our natural desires. But behind all asceticism the thought should be, 'Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes?' Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage: not that we may some day be free of horses altogether but that some day we may ride bare-back, confident and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world- shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else - since He has retained His own charger - should we accompany Him? ~ C.S. Lewis

lads who were to fight, and perhaps fall, on the fields of France and Flanders, Gallipoli and Palestine, were still roguish schoolboys with a fair life in prospect before ~ L.M. Montgomery

The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In ~ Madeline Drexler

These little hurts were like little pets or potted plants you were abruptly given the care of, needing to be fed or walked or watered. As you pass the half-century, the flesh, the coating on the person, begins to attenuate. And the world is full of blades and spikes. For a year or two your hands are nicked and scraped as a schoolboy's knee. Then you learn to protect yourself. This is what you'll go on doing until, near the end, you are doing nothing else--just protecting yourself. And while you are learning how to do that, a doorkey is a doornail, and the flap of the letterbox is a meat-slicer, and the very air is full of spikes and blades. ~ Martin Amis

Cadets can neither be treated as schoolboys or soldiers. ~ Robert E.Lee

New Rule: I don't give two fingleberries and a McShit-all that Dumbledore is gay. I never wanted to know who Dumbledore was in the first place. Let alone his sexuality. What concerns me is adults who read 800-page books about magic schoolboys ... and then try to talk to me about it. If I had the slightest interest in homosexuals with powers, I'd be a Republican. ~ Bill Maher

O, Life! how pleasant is thy morning,
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning!
Cold pausing Caution's lesson scorning,
We frisk away,
Like schoolboys, at the expected warning,
To joy and play. ~ Robert Burns

You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of histuition comes, on his way to school, from the shop- windows. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation. ~ C.S. Lewis

Christians remind me of schoolboys who want to look up the answers to their math problems in the back of the book rather than work them through. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle. ~ Charles Darwin

Ants, ants crawl my drunken arms as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays instead of Bach, ants crawl my drunken arms through the drink I reach for surfboards and sinks, for sunflowers and the typewriter falls like a heart-attack from the table or a dead Sunday bull, and the ants crawl into my mouth and down my throat, ~ Charles Bukowski

Very occasionally, very vaguely, English schoolboys are told not to tell lies, which is a totally different thing. I may silently support all the obscene fictions and forgeries in the universe, without once telling a lie. I may wear another man's coat, steal another man's wit, apostatize to another man's creed, or poison another man's coffee, all without ever telling a lie. But no English school-boy is ever taught to tell the truth, for the very simple reason that he is never taught to desire the truth. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'm from southern Arelon, Princess," Ahan said, reaching for some more clams. "To us, round is beautiful. Not everyone wants their women to look like starving schoolboys. ~ Brandon Sanderson

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

If there was one thing I feared as I was growing up ...
No, that's stupid. I feared hundreds of things: the dark, the death of my father, the possibility that I might rejoice the death of my mother, sums involving vernier calipers, groups of schoolboys with nothing much to do, death by drowning.
But of all these, I feared the most the possibility that I might go mad too. ~ Jerry Pinto

Gentlemen used to lie just as schoolboys lie, because they hung together and partly to help one another out. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The great body of our citizens shoot less as times goes on. We should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed among all classes, as well as in the military services by every means in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving peace in the world... The first step – in the direction of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should come – is to teach men to shoot! ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Reason? That dreary shed, that hutch for grubby schoolboys. ~ Theodore Roethke

From 1914 to 1918 a generation of German schoolboys daily experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations, which provided far more excitement and emotional satisfaction than anything peace could offer; and that has now become the underlying vision of Nazism. That is where it draws its allure from: its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest for action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty towards internal opponents. Anyone who does not join in the game is regarded not as an adversary but as a spoilsport. Ultimately that is also the source of Nazism's belligerent attitude towards neighboring states. Other countries are not regarded as neighbors but must be opponents, whether they like it or not. Otherwise the match must be called off! ~ Sebastian Haffner