Robert Smith Surtees (1805 – 1864)
English journalist, comic novelist and writer on field sports.
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He was a gentleman who was generally spoken of as having nothing a-year, paid quarterly.
It is an inwariable rule with the dealers to praise the bad points and let the good 'uns speak for themselves.
When at length they rose to go to bed, it struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs that the one before him walked very crookedly.
No man rides harder than my Lord Scamperdale – always goes as if he had a spare neck in his pocket.
Women never look so well as when one comes in wet and dirty from hunting.
'Untin' fills my thoughts by day, and many a good run I have in my sleep. Many a dig in the ribs I gives Mrs. J. when I think they're runnin' into the warmint…No man is fit to be called a sportsman wot doesn't kick his wife out of bed on a haverage once in three weeks!
I am a sportsman all over, and to the back-bone – 'Unting is all that's worth living for – all time is lost wot is not spent in 'unting – it is like the hair we breathe – if we have it not we die – it's the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty per cent of its danger.
Better be killed than frightened to death.
Life would be very pleasant if it were not for its enjoyments.
More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.
Mr. Jorrocks then called upon the company in succession for a toast, a song, or a sentiment. Nimrod gave, "The Royal Staghounds"; Crane gave, "Champagne to our real friends, and real pain to our sham friends."
There may be said to be three sorts of lawyers, able, unable, and lamentable.
The supply of good fellows is by no means in excess of the demand. A man has only to hoist the flag of hospitality to insure a very considerable amount of custom.
It is best to let the horse go his way, and pretend it is yours. There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse.
The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one.
Thus attired, with smiles assumed at the door, the young ladies entered the drawing-room in the full fervour of sisterly animosity.
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