Vulgar words in Peter Plymley's Letters, and selected essays (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 67 ~ ~ ~
Will a man discharge the solemn impertinences of the one office with less zeal, or shrink from the bloody boldness of the other with greater timidity, because the blockhead thinks he can eat angels in muffins and chew a spiritual nature in the crumpets which he buys from the baker's shop?
~ ~ ~ Sentence 222 ~ ~ ~
You ask me, if I think it possible for this country to survive the recent misfortunes of Europe?--I answer you, without the slightest degree of hesitation: that if Bonaparte lives, and a great deal is not immediately done for the conciliation of the Catholics, it does seem to me absolutely impossible but that we must perish; and take this with you, that we shall perish without exciting the slightest feeling of present or future compassion, but fall amidst the hootings and revilings of Europe, as a nation of blockheads, Methodists, and old women.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 440 ~ ~ ~
Who can doubt but that five years after he has got hold of the country, Ireland will be tossed away by Bonaparte as a present to some one of his ruffian generals, who will knock the head of Mr. Keogh against the head of Cardinal Troy, shoot twenty of the most noisy blockheads of the Roman persuasion, wash his pug-dogs in holy water, and confiscate the salt butter of the Milesian republic to the last tub?
~ ~ ~ Sentence 478 ~ ~ ~
He would be a very lazy blockhead if he were content, and I (who, though an inhabitant of the village, have preserved, thank God, some sense of justice) most earnestly counsel these half-fed claimants to persevere in their just demands, till they are admitted to a more complete share of a dinner for which they pay as much as the others; and if they see a little attenuated lawyer squabbling at the head of their opponents, let them desire him to empty his pockets, and to pull out all the pieces of duck, fowl, and pudding which he has filched from the public feast, to carry home to his wife and children.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 671 ~ ~ ~
But the world was never yet conquered by a blockhead.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 744 ~ ~ ~
The probability I admit to be, in each particular case, that the sweet little blockhead will in fact never get a brief;--but I will venture to say, there is not a parent from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay who does not conceive that his child is the unfortunate victim of the exclusion, and that nothing short of positive law could prevent his own dear, pre-eminent Paddy from rising to the highest honours of the State.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 783 ~ ~ ~
Now, I appeal to any human being, except Spencer Perceval, Esq., of the parish of Hampstead, what the disaffection of a clergy would amount to, gaping after this graduated bounty of the Crown, and whether Ignatius Loyala himself, if he were a living blockhead instead of a dead saint, could withstand the temptation of bouncing from 100 pounds a year at Sligo, to 300 pounds in Tipperary?
~ ~ ~ Sentence 871 ~ ~ ~
We manage the Corporation and Test Acts at present much in the same manner as if we were to persuade parish boys who had been in the habit of beating an ass to spare the animal, and beat the skin of an ass stuffed with straw; this would preserve the semblance of tormenting without the reality, and keep boy and beast in good humour.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 971 ~ ~ ~
The mournful and folly-stricken blockhead forgets that his toe cannot survive him; that if he dies, there can be no digital life apart from him: yet he lingers and fondles over this last part of his body, soothing it madly with little plasters, and anile fomentations, while the neglected fever rages in his entrails, and burns away his whole life.