United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She asked me to sit and talk with her because my voice was like the voice of her dead mother. BURGE-LUBIN. The complications must be frightful. Really I hardly know whether I do want to live much longer than other people. MRS LUTESTRING. You can always kill yourself, as cook did; but that was influenza. Long life is complicated, and even terrible; but it is glorious all the same.
That is not the business of the Accountant General: it is the business of the President. It is an outrageous waste of my time, and an unjustifiable shirking of your duty at my expense. I refuse to go. You must go. BURGE-LUBIN. My dear boy, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to take the job off your hands BARNABAS. Then do it. BURGE-LUBIN. Dont switch off. Listen.
CONFUCIUS. By your steadfast refusal to be governed at all. A horse that kicks everyone who tries to harness and guide him may be a pioneer of liberty; but he is not a pioneer of government. In China he would be shot. BURGE-LUBIN. Stuff! Do you imply that the administration of which I am president is no Government? CONFUCIUS. I do. I am the Government. BURGE-LUBIN. You!
There are moments when your levity, your ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you that if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be tempted to doubt your right to live at all. CONFUCIUS. Do you grudge us the few years we have? you who have three hundred! BURGE-LUBIN. You accuse me of levity!
BURGE-LUBIN. You may not be brave: one doesn't expect it from a Chink. But you have the devil's own cheek. CONFUCIUS. I have the assured certainty of the man who sees and knows. Your genial bluster, your cheery self-confidence, are pleasant, like the open air. But they are blind: they are vain. I seem to see a great dog wag his tail and bark joyously. But if he leaves my heel he is lost.
The other is that they all met their death by drowning. BURGE-LUBIN. Yes: I know. Can you explain it? CONFUCIUS. It cannot be explained. It is not reasonable. Therefore I do not believe it. The Accountant General rushes in, looking ghastly. He staggers to the middle of the table. BURGE-LUBIN. Whats the matter? Are you ill? Confucius calmly withdraws. BURGE-LUBIN. What on earth is it?
BURGE-LUBIN. Have you heard the result of the bye-election? CONFUCIUS. A walk-over. Only one candidate. BURGE-LUBIN. Any good? CONFUCIUS. He was released from the County Lunatic Asylum a fortnight ago. Not mad enough for the lethal chamber: not sane enough for any place but the division lobby. A very popular speaker. BURGE-LUBIN. I wish the people would take a serious interest in politics.
BURGE-LUBIN. How can any really vivid color go wrong with a black satin skin? It is our women's wretched pale faces that have to be matched and lighted. Yours is always right. THE NEGRESS. Yes: it is a pity your white beauties have all the same ashy faces, the same colorless drab, the same age. But look at their beautiful noses and little lips!
BURGE-LUBIN. But damn it, man I beg your pardon, Archbishop; but really, really THE ARCHBISHOP. Dont mention it. What were you going to say? BURGE-LUBIN. Well, you were drowned four times over. You are not a cat, you know. THE ARCHBISHOP. That is very easy to understand. Consider my situation when I first made the amazing discovery that I was destined to live three hundred years!
BARNABAS. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? I am an honest man, not a monster. I won my place in public life by demonstrating that the true expectation of human life is seventy-eight point six. And I will resist any attempt to alter or upset it to the last drop of my blood if need be. BURGE-LUBIN. Oh, tut tut! Come, come! Pull yourself together.
Word Of The Day