Edmund Clerihew Bentley

“Trent read and re-read the pitiful message [a suicide note], so full of the awful egotism of grief.”

“[S]he had a singular spaciousness of mind in which nothing little or mean could live.”

“Lord Southrop was, of course, eccentric in his views; and you never knew — here the housekeeper, with a despondent head-shake, paused, leaving unspoken the suggestion that a man who did not think or behave like other people might go mad at any moment.”

“Is it a cosmic law, d'you think, that conceited men's hats are always too small?”

“You may as well know, Philip — you'll soon find out, anyhow — the truth is she will flirt with any man that she doesn't actively dislike. She's so brimful of life she can't hold herself in — or she won't, rather; she says there's no harm in it, and she doesn't care if there is. Before her marriage she didn't go on in that way, but since it turned out badly she has been simply uncivilized on that point. And her being perfectly clear-headed about it makes it so much worse.”

“And as for that low, velvety voice of hers, if she asked me to murder my best friend I should have to do it on the spot.”

“I know, if anyone does — all research workers know — how much is missed that really matters because reports have to be written in officialese. They have to be, because a lot of us can't take anything seriously unless you make it dull for them.”

“He was less afraid of gentlemen than of most other kinds of men; for instinct told him that, however detestable a gentleman's personal character might be, he was usually not inclined to be censorious or even inquisitive about the conduct of his fellow-creatures.”

“That is almost the definition of any friendship that is worthwhile — that we don't care a damn how you behave yourself.”

“There are some places which, seen for the first time, yet seem to strike a chord of recollection. "I have been here before," we think to ourselves, "and this is one of my true homes." It is no mystery for those philosophers who hold that all which we shall see, with all which we have seen and are seeing, exists already in an eternal now; that all those places are home to us which in the pattern of our life are twisting, in past, present and future, tendrils of remembrance round our heart-strings.”

“Chapman & HallSwore not at all.Mr Chapman's yea was yea,And Mr Hall's nay was nay.”

“It was a weakness of Voltaire'sTo forget to say his prayers,And one which to his shameHe never overcame.”

“Edward the ConfessorSlept under the dresser.When that began to pall,He slept in the hall.”

“Sir Humphrey DavyAbominated gravy.He lived in the odiumOf having discovered sodium.”

“What I like about CliveIs that he is no longer alive.There is a great deal to be saidFor being dead.”

“When their lordships asked Bacon How many bribes he had taken He had at least the grace To get very red in the face.”