Bokelskere.no

Diogenes the man did not speak plainer to Alexander the Great than Diogenes the dog spoke to Florence.

Bjørnson fryda seg:

Herligt å kjøre in igjæn i Romerlugten, Romersorgløsheden, Romerskjønheden nedover til Capo le case 18. alle fire, […].

Du skal ikkje undertrykkja ein innflyttar! De veir korleis det kjennest å vera innflyttar, for de har sjølve vore innflyttarar i Egypt.

(2 Mos 23,9)

Oh thank GOD, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of Immortality! And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean!

‘Dear me, dear me! To think,’ said Miss Tox, bursting out afresh that night, as if her heart were broken, ‘that Dombey and Son should be a Daughter after all!’

‘Dombey, Dombey,’ said Miss Blimber, ‘I begin to be afraid you are a sad boy. When you don’t know the meaning of an expression, why don’t you seek for information?’

‘Mrs Pipchin told me I wasn’t to ask questions,’ returned Paul.

‘I must beg you not to mention Mrs Pipchin to me, on any account, Dombey,’ returned Miss Blimber. ‘I couldn’t think of allowing it. The course of study here, is very far removed from anything of that sort. A repetition of such allusions would make it necessary for me to request to hear, without a mistake, before breakfast-time to-morrow morning, from Verbum personale down to simillimia cygno.’

When the Midsummer vacation approached, no indecent manifestations of joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled at Doctor Blimber’s. Any such violent expression as ‘breaking up,’ would have been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The young gentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they never broke up. They would have scorned the action.

Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the expression of which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explain themselves; and Toots had long left off asking any questions of his own mind.

It was a wonder that the great clock in the hall, instead of being constant to its first inquiry, never said, ‘Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,’ for that phrase was often enough repeated in its neighbourhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were always stretched upon it.

‘Now, Dombey,’ said Miss Blimber. ‘How have you got on with those books?’

They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin — names of things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules — a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterwards obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.

[...]: and that Tozer. whose mind was affected in his sleep by similar causes, in a minor degree, talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek and Latin - it was all one to Paul - which, in the silence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and guilty effect.

[...] og så et forsøk på transkripsjon av den greske tittelen (på Kittelsens tittelblad: "Batraxomyomaxia". Forlaget gjør tydeligvis hva det kan for å leve opp til sitt eget navn.

(Jon Marius Haarberg omtaler Frode Sandvik (red.): "Hvad er Livet?" Satirekunstneren Theodor Kittelsen - på forlaget No Comprendo Press, som altså skriv Batraxomyomaxia i staden for Batrakhomyomakhia, tydelegvis i den tru at den greske bokstaven khi er den latinske bokstaven x.

One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane — a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.

'I tell you, Clara,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'I have been often flogged myself.'

'To be sure; of course,' said Miss Murdstone.

'Certainly, my dear Jane,' faltered my mother, meekly. 'But — but do you think it did Edward good?'

'Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?' asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.

'That's the point,' said his sister.

To this my mother returned, 'Certainly, my dear Jane,' and said no more.

I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone's eye as it lighted on mine.

The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.

It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time, - they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii, - and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite characters in them - as I did - and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones - which I did too. I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels - I forget what, now - that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees - the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive.

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.

The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I came to that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming again

Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemplyed, called her brother's attention to me by saying, 'Clara, ny dear, there's nothing like work - give your boy an exercise'; which caused me to be clapped down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers (though there was a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one another.

'How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber.

'None of it,' answered Paul. Feeling that the answer was a shock to Miss Blimber's sensibility, he looked up at the three faces that were looking down at him and said:

'I havn't been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn't learn a Latin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old Glubb. I wish you'd tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please.'

'What a dreadfully low name!' said Mrs Blimber. 'Unclassical to a decree! Who is the monster, child?'

'What monster?' inquired Paul.

'Glubb,' said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish.

'He's no more a monster than you are,' returned Paul.

Man behøver ikke bekymre seg for om et maleri kommer til å vare, men snarere om det spirer og gror og sprer frø som andre ting kan gro av. Et maleri må være fruktbart. Det skal avføde en verden.

Men skjer det ein skade, skal du bøta liv for liv, auge for auge, tann for tann, hand for hand, fot for fot, brannsår for brannsår, flengje for flengje, skramme for skramme.

(2 Mos 21,23-25 - ikkje spesielt godt sagt, men det er nå her desse orda står)

[...], Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming.

Tahitierne bader sjelden i sjøen unntatt når det er stor brenning. Da pleier de mest vågsomme både av menn og kvinner å hengi seg til en sport de kaller boure, dvs. de svømmer ut til de største brottsjøene med en lett planke på etpar meters lengde. Så velger de det rette øyeblikket for å frese inn flere hundre meter på toppen av en høyt skummende bølge.