F. Anstey

F. Anstey was the pen-name of Thomas Anstey Guthrie (8 August 1856 – 10 March 1934), an English novelist and journalist.

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Quotes

All quotes are from the public domain text of the novel, available at "Tourmalin's Time Cheques"

Two or three days at sea are equivalent to at least as many weeks on shore.
- Prologue

He was not a strong-minded man; but he had one quality which is almost as valuable a safeguard against temptation as strength of mind—namely, timidity.
- Prologue

The knowledge that one has a remedy within reach is often as effectual as the remedy itself, if not more so.
- Chapter 2, “The Second Cheque”

He had had a warning, a practical moral lesson which had merely arrived, as such things often do, rather after date.
- Chapter 3, “The Third Cheque”

“And you suppose that, knowing how I have changed, he will believe that!” she cried. “He will fire long before you can finish one of those fine sentences!”
- Chapter 8, “Paid in His Own Coin”

All quotes are from the public domain text of the novel, available at "The Brass Bottle"

Models of manly beauty are rare out of novels, and seldom interesting in them.
- Chapter 1, “Horace Ventimore Receives a Commission”

Candour’s the cement of friendship.
- Chapter 1, “Horace Ventimore Receives a Commission”

No doubt they would tolerate him now for the Professor’s sake; but who would not rather be ignored than tolerated?
- Chapter 3, “An Unexpected Opening”

I can’t call myself a busy man—unfortunately,” said Horace, with that frankness which scorns to conceal what other people know perfectly well already.
- Chapter 3, “An Unexpected Opening”

“No doubt the fault was mine,” said the Professor, in a tone that implied the opposite.
- Chapter 3, “An Unexpected Opening”

“Wisely was it written: ‘Let him that desireth oblivion confer benefits—but the memory of an injury endureth for ever.’”
- Chapter 4, “At Large”

“How excellent is the saying of one of old: ‘He that adventureth upon matrimony is like unto one who thrusteth his hand into a sack containing many thousands of serpents and one eel. Yet, if Fate so decree, he may draw forth the eel.’”
- Chapter 6, “Embarras de Richesses”

He called to mind all the millionaires he had ever read or heard of; they didn’t seem to get much fun out of their riches. The majority of them were martyrs to dyspepsia. They were often weighed down by the cares and responsibilities of their position; the only people who were unable to obtain an audience of them at any time were their friends; they lived in a glare of publicity, and every post brought them hundreds of begging letters, and a few threats; their children were in constant danger from kidnappers, and they themselves, after knowing no rest in life, could not be certain that even their tombs would be undisturbed. Whether they were extravagant or thrifty, they were equally maligned, and, whatever the fortune they left behind them, they could be absolutely certain that, in a couple of generations, it would be entirely dissipated.
- Chapter 7, “Gratitude—a Lively Sense of Favours to Come”

These statements were, as he felt even in making them, not only gratuitous, but utterly unconvincing, but he had arrived at that condition in which a man discovers with terror the unsuspected amount of mendacity latent in his system.
- Chapter 8, “Bachelor’s Quarters”

“Thou hast heard of her incomparable charms, and verily the ear may love before the eye.”
”It may,” admitted Horace, “but neither of my ears is the least in love at present.”
- Chapter 14, “Since There’s No Help, Come, Let Us Kiss and Part!”

“Veracity, as thou wilt learn,” answered the Jinnee, “is not invariably the Ship of Safety.”
- Chapter 17, “High Words”