Saturday, October 05, 2024
Beware of Shifty-Eyed People
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), The Path to Rome (1902; rpt. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1916), p. 234:
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Beware of shifty-eyed people. It is not only nervousness, it is also a kind of wickedness. Such people come to no good. I have three of them now in my mind as I write. One is a Professor.
And, by the way, would you like to know why universities suffer from this curse of nervous disease? Why the greatest personages stammer or have St. Vitus' dance, or jabber at the lips, or hop in their walk, or have their heads screwed round, or tremble in the fingers, or go through life with great goggles like a motor car? Eh? I will tell you. It is the punishment of their intellectual pride, than which no sin is more offensive to the angels.
