quotes_jul15_2012.htm

“No, confound him!” said the father testily. “Go on, sir! Injecto ter pulvere – you’ve kicked half the ditch into my eye already. ”

This is from “My Son’s Wife” in A Diversity of Creatures.

Midmore, a thoughtful young man, is one of a liberal aesthetic Hampstead set of intellectuals. But when he is left an estate in the country, with an income to support it, he turns himself, with relish, into a country gentleman. Here he is tangling with his fellow horsemen in the hunting field.

“Mass without mind always comes a cropper.” … Between his uncle’s discursive evening talks, studded with kitchen-Greek and out-of-date Roman society-verses; his morning tours with the puffing Aedile; and the confidences of his lictors at all hours; he fancied he understood….

This is from “The Church that was at Antioch” in Limits and Renewals. A young Roman administrator is responsible for law and order in the city of Antioch, where there is trouble between Jews and Christians. He is stabbed by an extremist, but dies pleading for clemency for his murderer.

“What? Oh, I see. Non hoc semper erit liminis aut aquae caelestis patiens latus. … Was that done with intention?”
“I – I thought it fitted, sir.”
“It does. It’s distinctly happy. What put it into your thick head, Paddy?”

This is from “Regulus” in A Diversity of Creatures. In King’s classics class a boy has quoted Horace very appositely. Later another boy in the class takes the blame for some mischief, and offers himself for justice, just like Regulus, The Roman general. As King says in the Common-room afterwards “…some of it sticks among the barbarians”.