The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Alan Bradley

I’m at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

growing-up, laughter

I had once repeated the experiment to reassure myself that this was so, and it was. Ashes to ashes; starch to sugar. A little window into the Creation

chemistry, creation

I dreamt of turrets and craggy ledges where the windswept rain blew in from the ocean with the odor of violets. A pale woman in Elizabethan dress stood beside my bed and whispered in my ear that the bells would ring. An old salt in an oilcloth jacket sat atop a piling, mending nets with an awl, while far out at sea a tiny aeroplane winged its way towards the setting sun.

color, dream, ocean, sea

Not to be too dramatic about it, that night I slept the sleep of the damned. I dreamt of turrets and craggy ledges where the windswept rain blew in from the ocean with the odor of violets. A pale woman in Elizabethan dress stood beside my bed and whispered in my ear that the bells would ring. An old salt in an oilcloth jacket sat atop a piling, mending nets with an awl, while far out at sea a tine aeroplane winged its way towards the setting sun.

damned, drama, dramatic, dream, flavia, mystery

The vicar’s organized a snow-shoveling party.””But why?” I asked.It didn’t make sense. If all the roads were closed, what use was it clearing a way to the front door?”Because,” said Aunt Felicity’s voice behind me, “it is a well-known fact that more than two men shut up together in an enclosed space for more than an hour constitute a hazard to society. If unpleasantness is to be avoided, they must be made to go outdoors and work off their animal spirits.

I did not elaborate, nor did I need to. The human imagination is capable of anything when left on its own to fill in the blanks.

Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.

Although it seems shocking to say so, grief is a funny thing. On the one hand, you’re numb, yet on the other, something inside is trying desperately to claw its way back to normal: to pull a funny face, to leap out like a jack-in-the-box, to say “Smile, damn you, smile!

I do not encourage early morning chirpiness, even in those whom I know and love. It is generally a sign of a sloppy mind, and is not to be encouraged.

humour, mornings

Mother Goose!I have never much cared for flippant remarks, especially when others make them, and in particular, I don’t give a frog’s fundament for them when they come from an adult.

But what he said was true enough: I had recently destroyed a perfectly good set of wire braces by straightening them to pick a lock. Father had grumbled, of course, but had made another appointment to have me netted and dragged back up to London, to that third-floor ironmonger’s shop in Farringdon Street, where I would be strapped to a board like Boris Karloff as various bits of ironmongery were shoved into my mouth, screwed in, and bolted to my gums.

I remembered that Beethoven’s symphonies had sometimes been given names… they should have call [the Fifth] the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.

beethoven, humor, humour, music, symphonies