41～45

41.Now and again there would arise a feeling that it was hard upon my mother that she should have to do so much for us, that we should be idle while she was forced to work so constantly; but we should probably have thought more of that had she not taken to work as though it were the recognised condition of life for an old lady of fifty-five.

 
42.Excess, it seems to me, may justly be praised if we do not praise it to excess. In a lukewarm world it is the enemy of lukewarmness. It is a protest against virtues that sail among the shallows of caution and timidity and never venture among the perils of the high seas. St. Paul might not have been so good a Christian if he had not previously been an excessive persecutor of Christians. All genius, whether religious or artistic, is a kind of excess.

 
43.Though compliments should arise naturally out of the occasion, they should not appear to be prompted by the spur of it; for then they seem hardly spontaneous. Applaud a man's speech at the moment when he sits down, and he will take your compliment as exacted by the demands of common civility; but let some space intervene, and then show him that the merits of his speech have dwelt with you when you might have been expected to have forgotten them, and he will remember your compliment for a much longer time than you have remembered his speech.

 
44.It is surely discreditable, under the age of thirty, not to be shy. Self-assurance in the young betokens a lack of sensibility: the boy or girl who is not shy at twenty-two will at forty-two become a bore. “I may be wrong, of course,"—thus will he or she gabble at forty-two, “but what I always say is ...” No, let us educate the younger generation to be shy in and out of season: to edge behind the furniture: to say spasmodic and ill-digested things: to twist their feet round the protective feet of sofas and armchairs. For shyness is the protective fluid within which our personalities are able to develop into natural shapes.

 
45.There is one thing for which I envy the general playgoer above all. I mean his freedom and pungency of criticism. Anonymity gives him irresponsibility, and his resentment at being bored not being subject to the cooling process of literary composition, his language is apt to be really terrible. Talk about printed criticism! Actors and authors do talk of it often enough, and on the whole don't seem to like it; but let them mingle with the general playgoer and keep their ears open! The general playgoer is the great purveyor of secret criticism.