A garland of quotations VII

Culled from the finest jokers in literary history, and re-woven every Monday

Nay, but, for terror of his wrathful Face,
I swear I will not call Injustice Grace;
     Not one Good Fellow of the Tavern but
Would kick so poor a Coward from the place.
•Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 2nd ed. (1868).

Ha, ha, ha! Love, and Scandal, are the best Sweeteners of Tea.
•Henry Fielding, Love in Several Masques (1728).

his flesh ceases to be the flesh of love
his flesh is a small plastic bag, filled with painful urine.
•Eddy van Vliet, “Grootvader” (1971).

“O father, do not turn me into a tadpole!”
”I will not, but I will turn thee out of doors.”
And he did.
•Richard Garnett, “The Poison Kiss” (1888).

In a Philadelphia store window the following sign was displayed: “This shop is closed in honor of the King of kings, who will appear about the 20th of October [1844]. Get ready, friends, to crown Him Lord of all.”
•John H. Gerstner, The Theology of the Major Sects (1960).

To begin briefly with the ecclesiastical aspect of things, as long as one believed in religion, one could defenestrate a good Christian or pious Jew from any story in the castle of hope or prosperity, and he would always land on his spiritual feet, as it were, because all religions included in their view of life an irrational, incalculable element they called God’s inscrutable will. Whenever a man could not make sense of things, he merely had to remember this rogue element in the equation, and his spirit could rub its hands with satisfaction, as it were.
•Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities II (1932).

He stood against a wall in Havana with head up and unflinching eyes. They ordered him to kneel, but he declined. “An American kneels only to God,” he said, and next instant he fell forward on his face riddled with bullets.
•William MacLeod Raine, Famous Sheriffs and Western Outlaws (1929).

He who can despise nothing can value nothing with propriety; and who can value nothing has no right to despise any thing.
•Johann Kaspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man. Translated from the Original Manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, Citizen of Zuric (1787).

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
     ’T is that I may not weep.
•Lord Byron, Don Juan IV (1821).

She is the laugh, I am the laughter.
•Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987).

References: van Vliet: from Hans van de Waasenberg, ed., Five Contemporary Flemish Poets (Cross Cultural Review, 1979); Musil: trans. Sophie Wilkins (Vintage, 1996); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.