Funny Quotations
Three Men in a Boat has many hilarious elements to it. Here are the top 5 quotations from the novel that made me laugh the most.
"'Hark! Do you not hear? Is it the mermaids singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses, held by seaweed?' Harris would take you by the arm, and say: 'I know what it is, old man, you've got a chill. Now, you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch you ever tasted- put you right in less than no time.'" (pg. 12)
"Now, I'm not like that. I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it." (pg. 29)
"George put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy- chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the table and lit a cigar. This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, 'Oh you-! 'Here, let me do it.' 'There you are, simple enough!'- really teaching them as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people sitting down doing nothing when I'm working." (pg. 28-29)
"'Doesn't anybody in the whole house know where my coat is? I never came across such a set in all my life- upon my word I didn't. Six of you!- and you can't find a coat I put down not five minutes ago! Well, of all the-' Then he'd get up, and find that he had been sitting on it, and would call it: 'Oh, you can give it up! I've found it myself now. Might just as well ask the cat to find anything as expect you people to find it.'" (pg. 17)
"'Oh you leave that to me. Don't you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I'll do all that.' And then he would take off his coat, and begin. He would send the girl out for sixpenn'orth of nails, and then one of the boys after her to tell her what size to get; and, from that, he would gradually work down, and start the whole house." (pg. 16)