Tests for self-control Test I

1. Rebecca burst into the bar … “Hi, hi” she said, kissing us all, sitting down and gesturing to the waiter for a glass. “How’s it going? Bridge, how’s it going with Mark? You must be really pleased to get a boyfriend at last.”

“At last.” Grrr. First jellyfish of the evening. (H. Fielding)

2. “He’s comfortably off, and I know that his mother is dying for him to settle down and produce children. If you were interested…” (P. Jordan)

3. You’re not a bad woman in your way and you have every grace and charm. (W.S. Maugham)

4. A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car. (K. Tynan)

5. But can you for a moment imagine that you, one man, can have any effect on such a restless, busy, lawless, intensely individualistic people as the people of America? (W.S. Maugham)

6. She knew I would sacrifice pride, honour, personal feeling, every damned quality on earth, rather than stand before our little world after a week of marriage and have them know the things about her that she had told me then. (D. du Maurier)

7. I wanted to run out of the room and scream and scream. (D. du Maurier)

8. I wished we could sweep away the years and see her. I wished we did not have to degrade the house with our modern jig-tunes, so out-of-place and unromantic. (D. du Maurier)

9. “Actually, it was great,” said Mark. “She made the whole lot of us look like pompous arses. Anyway, must be ff, nice to see you again.” (Helen Fielding)

10. It was then that Maxim looked at me. (D. du Maurier)

11. Cannot believe what has happened. At half past eleven, youth came into office bearing enormous bunch of red roses and brought them to my desk. Me! You should have seen the faces of Patchouli and Horrible Harold. Even Richard Finch was stunned into silence, only managing a pathetic “Sent them to ourself, did we?”

Opened the card and this is what it said:

Happy Valentine’s Day to the light of my dreary old life. (H. Fielding)

12. He shepherded me around the rooms as though I were a group of tourists, and no professor of art could have discoursed more instructively than he did. (W.S. Maugham)

13. The thoroughly well-informed man is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. (O. Wilde)

14. London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know. (O. Wilde)

15. It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It’s like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting ‘Cathy’ and banging your head against a tree. (H. Fielding)

Test II

1. I was waiting for my money to come, freshly baked and piping hot, out of the cash point, wondering how my mother was going to manage for two weeks in Portugal on two hundred pounds, when I spotted her scurrying towards me, wearing sunglasses, even though it was pissing with rain, and looking shiftily from side to side. (H. Fielding)

2. … Perhaps it was he who drove Daisy and Gatsby over to East Egg the night of the accident, and perhaps he had made a story about it all his own. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

3. Your hands are your most fascinating feature. I’m always amazed at the infinite grace with which you use them. Whether by nature or by art you never make a gesture without imparting beauty to it. They’re like flowers sometimes and sometimes like birds on the wing. They’re more expressive than any words you can say. (W.S. Maugham)

4. You can’t understand my shame, and loathing, and disgust.

(D. du Maurier)

5. A CUL-DE-SAC in a working-class neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, a little after midnight. (Th. Harris)

6. How many hours, months, years, have I spent worrying about weight ….. (H. Fielding)

7. “Mum, I’ve told you. I don’t need to be fixed up with ...” (H. Fielding)

8. “She made a bargain with me up there, on the side of the precipice,” he said. “I’ll run your house for you,” she told me, “I’ll look after your precious Manderley for you, make it the most famous show-place in all the country, if you like. And people will visit us, and envy us, and talk about us; they’ll say we are the luckiest, happiest, handsomest couple in all England. What a leg-pull, Max,” she said, “what a God-damn triumph!” She sat there on the hillside, laughing, tearing a flower to bits in her hands. (D. du Maurier)

9. No one must read this bit as is shameful. Was so excited about him saying the L-word so early on in the relationship that accidentally rang up Jude and Shaz and left messages telling them. But realize now this was shallow and wrong. (H. Fielding)

10. “Daniel,” she exploded. “You selfish, self-indulgent, manipulative, emotional blackmailer. It was you – for God’s sake – who chucked her. So you can just bloody well put up with it.” (H. Fielding)

11. Surely it is not normal to be treating my answer phone like an old-fashioned human partner: rushing home to it from work to see what mood it is in, whether it will tinklingly confirm that I am lovable and an accepted member of society or be empty and distant, like now for example. (H. Fielding)

12. I had turned quite cold all over at the sight of her, and at first I could not find my voice. (D. du Maurier)

13. I could not bear their moon faces staring at me again. (D. du Maurier)

14. “You know I envy you this car – what a beaut!” (J.H. Chase)

15. “You see? He’s coming out of it already. Gimme the rope.” (J.H. Chase)