Are You a Bromide?: Or, The Sulphitic Theory Expounded and Exemplified According to the Most Recent Researches Into the Psychology of Boredom, Including Many Well-known Bromidioms Now in UseThis volume is a book of humor and nonsense writings by Gelett Burgess. |
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Common terms and phrases
Absolute Age accepted adjective agreeable amused artists axiom become bromidic become Sulphites Bores brain Bromide will never bromidic tendencies Bromidioms BURGESS cept Chatelaine classic clever Conservative convince cranks cult curve damnation definite dogma easily euphemisms expla fact fancy friends funda Funny girl Gothic groups hackneyed heard humidity humor Hypo-Sulphites illu impressed inevitable intensely sulphitic knew leap let us consider LIBRARY magazines marry mental mides midic midism minates mind misconception never know Nitro-Bromide one's original pected perhaps person Philistine philosophers phite phitic predicate priori REC'D LD recognize reflex relish remark Renaissance slang society stories subtleties Sulphite and Bromide Sulphites and Bro Sulphitic Theory surprises symptoms talk teresting terminology Theorem thing thinking thought thoughtless tion tremes meet trite types understand UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA veriest versus vinced vogue wear women word وو குத்தம்
Popular passages
Page 47 - For, don't you mark ? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted — better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.
Page 18 - In a word, they all think and talk alike — one may predicate their opinion upon any given subject. They follow custom and costume, they obey the Law of Averages. They are, intellectually, all peas in the same conventional pod, unenlightened, prosaic, living by rule and rote. They have their hair cut every month and their minds keep regular office-hours. Their habits of thought are all readymade, proper, sober, befitting the Average Man. They worship dogma. The Bromide conforms to everything sanctioned...
Page 62 - You may estimate your capacity for comic perception by being able to detect the ridicule of them you love, without loving them less : and more by being able to see yourself somewhat ridiculous in dear eyes, and accepting the correction their image of you proposes.
Page 33 - It isn't so much the heat (or the cold) as the humidity in the air." Sulphites, on the other hand, " are agreed upon most of the basic facts of life, and this common understanding makes it possible for them to eliminate the obvious from their conversation.
Page 39 - A sulphite is a person who does his own thinking ; he is a person who has surprises up his sleeve. He is explosive. One can never foresee what he will do, except that it will be a direct and spontaneous manifestation of his own personality.
Page 26 - Why aren't there any good stories in the magazines, nowadays?" VII. "I'm afraid I'm not educated up to Japanese prints." VIII. "The Japanese are such an interesting little people!" "No, I don't » play chess. I haven't got that kind of a brain." X. "No, I never intend to be married.
Page 17 - The Bromide does his thinking by syndicate. He follows the main-traveled roads, he goes with the crowd. In a word, they all think and talk alike — one may predicate their opinion upon any given subject. They follow custom and costume, they obey the Law of Averages.
Page 25 - That dog understands every word I say." IV. "You'll feel differently about these things when you're married!" V. "It isn't money, it's the PRINCIPLE of the thing I object to." VI. "Why aren't there any good stories in the magazines, nowadays?
Page 40 - He is always sulphitic, but as often impossible. He will not bore you, but he may shock you. You find yourself watching him to see what is coming next, and it may be a subtle jest, a paradox, or an atrocious violation of etiquette. All cranks, all reformers, and most artists are sulphitic. The insane asylums are full of Sulphites. They not only do ordinary things in unusual ways, but they do unusual things in ordinary^ ways.
Page 9 - Bromide" and " Sulphite" as applied to psychological rather than chemical analysis...