Читать книгу Anthology of Black Humor - André Breton - Страница 13

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

*

Venus, a beautiful, good-natured lady, was the goddess of love; Juno, a terrible shrew, the goddess of marriage; and they were always mortal enemies.

*

Apollo was held the god of physic, and sender of diseases. Both were originally the same trade, and still continue.

*

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason; their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

*

There is a story in Pausanias of a plot for betraying a city discovered by the braying of an ass: the cackling of geese saved the Capitol, and Catiline’s conspiracy was discovered by a whore. These are the only three animals, as far as I remember, famous in history for evidences and informers.

*

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

*

That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

*

A man would have but few spectators, if he offered to shew for threepence how he could thrust a redhot iron into a barrel of gunpowder, and it should not take fire.

*

Query, whether churches are not dormitories of the living as well as of the dead?

*

Jealousy, like fire, may shrivel up horns, but it makes them stink.

*

A footman’s hat should fly off to everybody: and therefore Mercury, who was Jupiter’s footman, had wings fastened to his cap.

*

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

*

I asked a poor man how he did? He said, he was like a washball, always in decay.

*

It is said of the horses in the vision, that “their power was in their mouths and in their tails.” What is said of horses in the vision, in reality may be said of women.

*

Elephants are always drawn smaller than life, but fleas always larger.

*

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money: therefore money is better than counsel.

*

At Windsor I was observing to my Lord Bolingbroke, “that the tower where the maids of honour lodged (who at that time were very handsome) was much frequented with crows.” My lord said, “it was because they smelt carrion.”