FOR WHAT HAVE YOU A DISTASTE OR AVERSION?


"I do not like you, Dr. Fell—

"The reason why I cannot tell;

"But this I know full well,

"I do not like you, Dr. Fell."



FOR WHAT HAVE YOU A DISTASTE OR AVERSION?


Gentleman.—Three loud talking women,

That are discoursing of the newest fashion.

John Tobin.

1. Lady.—Ye say, "There is naething I hate like the men,

But the deuce gae wi'm to believe me."

Burns.

2. The banquet-hall, the play, the ball,

Have lost their charms for thee.

G. P. Morris.

3. It's hardly in a body's power

To keep at times frae being sour,

To see how things are shared;

How best o' chiels are whiles in want,

While coofs on countless thousands rant,

And ken na how to wair't.

Burns.

4. Oh, it is sad to look upon

The play-place of our youthful hours,

And mark what wasting change hath run

As fire amid its bowers,

And sear'd its greenwood tree, and left

A trunk all blacken'd and bereft!

J. W. Miller.

5. Conversation, when reduced to say

The hundredth time what you have said before.

Mrs. Sigourney.

6. You never speak the word farewell

But with an utterance faint and broken,

A heart-sick yearning for the time

When it shall never more be spoken.

Bowles.

7. Gentleman.—Now, my lord, as for tripe, it's your utter aversion.

Goldsmith—Haunch of Venison.

7. Lady.—An exquisite of the highest stamp.

Albert Pike.

8. To see

Things of no better mould

Than thou thyself art, greedily

In Fame's bright page enroll'd.

Motherwell.

9. Weaving spiders.—

Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence!

Midsummer Night's Dream.

10. You have no taste for pomp and strife,

Which others love to find;

Your only wish, that bliss of life,

A poor and quiet mind.

Clare.

11. You like not this phrenology,

This system of unfolding

The secret of a man's desires

To every one's beholding.

R. M. Charlton.

12. The sullen passion, and the hasty pet,

The swelling lip, the tear-distended eye,

The peevish question, the perverse reply.

Hayley—Triumphs of Temper.

13. Nor do you love that common phrase of guests,

As, we make bold, or, we are troublesome;

We take you unprovided, and the like;

——nor that common phrase of hosts,

Oh, had I known your coming, we'd have had

Such things and such; nor blame of cook, to say,

This dish or that hath not been served with care.

Thomas Heywood and Richard Broome—
The Late Lancashire Witches.

14. Tales of love were wont to weary you;

I know you joy not in a love-discourse.

Two Gentlemen of Verona.

15. 'Tis a dreary thing to be

Tossing on the wide, wide sea,

When the sun has set in clouds,

And the wind sighs through the shrouds,

With a voice and with a tone

Like a living creature's moan!

Epes Sargent.

16. To hear the French talk French around you,

And wonder how they understand each other;

To hearken, and find all attempts confound you

At guessing what they mean by all their pother.

Byron—Giuseppino.

17. Books! out upon them; faithless chroniclers

Mere wordy counsellors—cold comforters

In the hour of sorrow.

Lady Flora Hastings.

18. Your curse upon the venom'd slang

That shoots your tortured gums alang,

An' through your lugs gies mony a twang,

Wi' gnawing vengeance;

Tearing your nerves wi' bitter pang,

Like racking engines.

Burns.

19. As for stupid reason,

That stalking, ten-foot rule,

She's always out of season,

A tedious, testy fool.

Mrs. Follen.

20. Gentleman.—That most active member of mortal things,

A woman's tongue; something like a smoke-jack,

For it goes ever, without winding up.

John Tobin—Honey Moon.

20. Lady.—You would rather hear your dog bark at a crow,

Than a man swear he loves you.

Much Ado About Nothing.

21. Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey.

Ossian.

22. To have odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on you.

Much Ado About Nothing.

23. Whenever a change is wrought,

And you know not the reason why,

In your own or an old friend's thought.

Barry Cornwall.

24. You are weary of the endless theme of Cupid's smiles and sighs,

You are sick of reading rigmaroles about "my lady's eyes;"

You cannot move, you cannot look around, below, above,

But men and women, birds and bees, are prating about love.

R. M. Charlton.

25. You hate ingratitude more in man,

Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,

Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption

Inhabits our frail blood.

Twelfth Night.

26. There are haughty steps that would walk the globe

O'er necks of humbler ones;

You would scorn to bow to their jewell'd robes,

Or the beam of their coin-lit suns.

Miss L. P. Smith.

27. You'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turn'd,

Or a dry wheel grate on an axle-tree,

And that would set your teeth nothing on edge,

Nothing so much as mincing poetry.

Henry IV.

28. In your soul you loathe

All affectation. 'Tis your perfect scorn,

Object of your implacable disgust.

Cowper—Task.

29. Gentleman.—To pick up fans and knitting-needles,

And list to songs, and tunes, and watch for smiles,

And smile at pretty prattle.

Byron—Werner.

29. Lady.—An a lover be tardy, you had as lief be wooed of a snail; for though the snail comes slowly, he carries his house on his head.

As You Like It.

30. That the king should reign on a throne of gold,

Fenced round by his power divine;

That the baron should sit in his castle old,

Drinking his ripe red wine;

While below, below, in his ragged coat,

The beggar he tuneth a hungry note,

And the spinner is bound to his weary thread,

And the debtor lies down with an aching head.

Barry Cornwall.

31. Lighted halls,

Cramm'd full of fools and fiddles.

R. C. Sands.

32. To hear

The roaring of the raging elements,

To know all human skill, all human strength

Avail not; to look round, and only see

The mountain wave, incumbent with its weight

Of bursting waters o'er the reeling bark;—

Oh, God, this is indeed a dreadful thing!

And he who hath endured the horror once

Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm

Howl round his home, but he remembers it,

And thinks upon the suffering mariner.

Southey—Madoc.

33. I perceive you delight not in music.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

34. You hate the gold and silver which persuade

Weak men to follow far-fatiguing trade;

Who madly think the flowery mountain's side,

The fountain's murmur, and the valley's pride,

The river's flow, less pleasing to behold

Than dreary deserts, if they lead to gold.

Collins—Eclogues.

35. To climb life's worn and heavy wheel,

Which draws up nothing new.

Young—Night Thoughts.

36. To tax a bad voice to slander music. An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him.

Much Ado About Nothing.

37. It moves you more perhaps than folly ought,

When some green heads, as void of wit as thought,

Suppose themselves monopolists of sense,

And wiser mens' ability pretence.

Cowper.

38. Gentleman.—A woman moved, which like a fountain troubled

(Is) muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,

And in no wise is meet or reasonable.

Taming of the Shrew.

38. Lady.— The heavens preserve me

From that dull blessing, an obedient husband.

Tobin—Honey Moon.

39. You're tired of visits, modes, and forms,

And flatteries paid to fellow-worms;

Their conversation cloys.

Dr. Watts.

40. The spider, that weaver of cunning so deep,

Who rolls himself up in a ball to sleep.

Mrs. Sigourney.

41. A fly that tickles the nasal tip.

Miss H. F. Gould.

42. Man delights not thee; no, nor woman neither.

Henry IV.

43. Church-yards unadorn'd with shades

And blossoms——Naked rows of graves

And melancholy ranks of monuments;

——where the course grass between

Shoots up its dull green spikes, and in the wind

Hisses;

——where the neglected bramble

Grows near the dead.

Bryant.

44. You all punctilios hate,

Though long familiar with the great.

Swift.

45. That he who's right, and he who swerveth,

Meet at the goal the same,

Where no one hath what he deserveth,

Not even an empty name.

Barry Cornwall.

46. Wooing, wedding, and repenting.

Much Ado About Nothing.

47. Soft-buzzing slander—silky moth that eats

An honest name.

Thomson.

48. The blood-extracting bill and filmy wing,

The light pump, and freckled feet—

Of the musquito.

Bryant.

49. You do not like but yet;

But yet is as a jailer to bring forth

Some monstrous malefactor.

Antony and Cleopatra.

50. Gentleman.— You'd rather

Ride a day's hunting on an outworn jade,

Than follow in the train of a great man

In his dull pageantries.

Byron—Werner.

50. Lady.—Never yet did housewife notable

Greet with a smile a rainy washing-day.

Mrs. Barbauld.

51. Thou dread'st to see

The glowing summer sun,

And balmy blossoms on the tree

Unfolding one by one;

They speak of things which once have been,

But never more can be:

And earth all deck'd in smiles again

Is still a waste to thee.

Sarah H. Whitman.

52. Softest winds are dreary,

And summer sunlight weary,

And sweetest things uncheery,

You know not why.

J. R. Lowell.

53. The Guinea-hen,

Which keeps a piercing and perpetual scream.

Mrs. Sigourney.

54. Sleep, infested with the burning sting

Of bug infernal, who the live-long night

With direst suction sips thy liquid gore.

Robert Ferguson.

55. When you behold a spider

Prey on a fly, a magpie on a worm,

Or view a butcher, with horn-handled knife,

Slaughter a tender lamb as dead as mutton,

Indeed, indeed you're very, very sick!

Horace and James Smith—Rejected Addresses.

56. Where'er that place the priests ca' hell,

Whence a' the tones of misery yell,

And ranked plagues their numbers tell,

In dreadfu' row,

Thou, toothache, surely bear'st the bell

Amang them a'!

Burns.

57. You scorn this hated scene

Of masking and disguise,

Where men on men still gleam

With falseness in their eyes,

Where all is counterfeit,

And truth hath never say,

Where hearts themselves do cheat,

Concealing hope's decay,

And, writhing at the stake,

Themselves do liars make.

Motherwell.

58. You call the time misspent that is bestow'd

On loud-tongued orators, whose art it is

To launch their hearers upon passion's tide,

And drive them on by gusts of windy words.

Cumberland—Calvary.

59. You do despise a liar as you do despise one that is false, or as you despise one that is not true.

Merry Wives of Windsor.

60. Songs and unbaked poetry,

Such as the dabblers of our time contrive,

That has no weight, nor wheel to move the mind,

Nor indeed nothing but an empty sound.

Beaumont and Fletcher—The Elder Brother.