“I've never done any cattle-liftin', but it seems to me-e-e that one might just as well be stalky about a thing as not.”

“Stalky,' in their school vocabulary, meant clever, well-considered and wily, as applied to plans of action; and 'stalkiness' was the one virtue Corkran toiled after.”

“Well-meanin' man. Did it all for the best." Stalky curled gracefully round the stair-rail. "Head in a drain-pipe. Full confession in the left boot.”

“He has oppressed Beetle, M'Turk, and me, privatim et seriatim, one by one, as he could catch us. But now he has insulted Number Five up in the music-room, and in the presence of these - these ossifers of the Ninety-third, wot look like hairdressers. Binjimin, we must make him cry "Capivi!"'Stalky's reading did not include Browning or Ruskin.”

“Mad! Quite mad!' said Stalky to the visitors, as one exhibiting strange beasts. 'Beetle reads an ass called Brownin', and M'Turk reads an ass called Ruskin; and-' 'Ruskin isn't an ass,' said M'Turk. 'He's almost as good as the Opium-Eater. He says we're "children of noble races, trained by surrounding art." That means me, and the way I decorated the study when you two badgers would have stuck up brackets and Christmas cards. Child of a noble race, trained by surrounding art, stop reading or I'll shove a pilchard down your neck!”

“And if you expect you'll gain anything from us by your way of approachin' us, you're jolly well mistaken. That's all. Good-night.'They clattered upstairs, injured virtue on every inch of their backs.'But - but what the dickens have we done?' said Harrison, amazedly, to Craye.'I don't know. Only - it always happens that way when one has anything to do with them. They're so beastly plausible.”

“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.”