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unearths some literary gems.
From An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde:
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NANJAC: I read all your English newspapers. I find them so amusing.
GORING: Then, my dear Nanjac, you must certainly read between the lines.
NANJAC: I should like to, but my professor objects.
***
And then the eldest son has quarrelled with his father, and it is said that when they meet at the club Lord Brancaster always hides himself behind the money article in The Times. However, I believe that is quite a common occurrence nowadays and that they have to take in extra copies of The Times at all the clubs in St. James’s Street.
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Shall I see you at Lady Bonar’s to-night? She has discovered a wonderful new genius. He does...nothing at all, I believe. That is a great comfort, is it not?
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During the Season, father, I only talk seriously on the first Tuesday in every month, from four to seven.
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Everybody one meets is a paradox nowadays. It is a great bore.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From "The Woman I Adore," by John Maddison Morton:
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Green: T. might possibly stand for Thomas—indeed, on an emergency, I think T. would stand very well for Thomas.
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Judkins: I went to the concert at the theatre to hear the renowned Tenor, who, by the bye, didn't sing after all.
Green: Of course not—for my part I've been served that trick so often, that, for the future, I mean to go only to the Marionettes—they never disappoint the public—they never have colds and sore throats.
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Mrs. Smiler: There is a daughter, eh? Miss Timpkins, I believe!
Green: Or Simkins—but as I invariably get bothered as to whose daughter she is, I always call her Miss Timkins and Simkins.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Murder at Morrington Hall, by Clare McKenna:
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"She's lovely....Like a Gibson girl."
"A gibbon?" Mother said. "How ungenerous of you, Alice."
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From "A Regular Fix," by John Maddison Morton:
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De Brass: The property had to be divided; but unluckily in the meantime—(very rapidly)—Jacob marries; Alexander disappears; Jonathan dies, and up starts Timothy. I don't know why he should, but he did, and what does Timothy say? Why, Timothy says, “Oh, oh!” says Timothy, “thirty days hath September, April, June and November” but if this is the way the cat jumps, up goes the income tax, and then what becomes of Aunt Sally? Don't you see? (Poking SURPLUS in the ribs.)
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Mrs. Surplus: (L., aside, and coquettishly). A strange gentleman! Can it be the pale, interesting youth who upset the lobster salad in my lap at the supper table last night, from excess of emotion?
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Mrs. Surplus: (tenderly to SURPLUS). Oh, Barnaby!
Surplus: Don't Barnaby me!
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Grave Maurice, by Martha Grimes:
***She laughed the way some people sneezed, an ah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha that segued into a brief explosion.***An apology dialectic, you could say, laying the groundwork for future apologies, if need be.***[Who Needs Context? dept.]"But it's such a good nothing. The design is good."***[Who Needs Context? dept.]"Meat loaf in the collective unconscious? Why doesn't that sound right?"***Diane actually spilled a few drops of her drink, bringing the glass down on the table in martini applause.***She was essence, all residue left back in the bottom of the bottle, a girl decanted.***The Little Chef version was merely a shadow on the wall of Plato's cave.***All of this leaving Melrose feeling the evening hadn't so much as [sic] ended as collapsed around him, collapsing and elongating like a bellows or in a wind tunnel with some Proustian crazy.***When Jury walked into the breakfast room the following morning, time had been restored to its familiar sequential meanderings.***"I'm taking a page from Diane's book.""There's only one page in Diane's book....Take it, and there won't be any book."***"You're obsessive about obsession."***These were probably not all of the [answering-machine] messages; they were the ones selected by Carol-anne, those of which she approved and out of which she fashioned her short list, as if the messages were competing for the Booker Prize.***Was she splurging on non sequiturs tonight?***Even her toes shrugged.***"We'll beef tea him!"***[In which Grimes puts the "op" in onomat-op-oeia. See, it's not a champagne cork, so it's not a "pop." It's Bridget Riley, not Roy Lichtenstein.]The action of pulling made a pleasant little op and he poured the wine into the glasses.***
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unearths some literary gems.
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I was not about to shatter the optimistic illusions of a figment of my own imagination.
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This is how I usually spent my sleepless hours. Casting imaginary movies....
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I was...exhausted from the misspent adrenalin of two consecutive wild goose chases.
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After eighty plus years of loneliness, she was still bright and inquisitive, and, although it was weird to say this about a ghost, lively.
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unearths some literary gems.
From "The Unfinished Gentleman," by Charles Selby:
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Jem: How dem'd platological!--how excessively surreptitious! [....] How exquisitively mythological!
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unearths some literary gems.
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[Freudian Typos dept., Putting the Pumpernickel in Pimpernil div.]
He went on to tell her some wild tale about a case he'd just wrapped up, exaggerating his own Scarlet Pimpernil roll [sic] in the proceedings.
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Brian Ely was a stocky man with a head like a bullet, which was close to his shoulders, so that he seemed to be perpetually shrugging.
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"Even adults sometimes find it hard to read Charles Dickens"...
"I skip the hard parts, but it doesn't hurt because he wrote so many pages about everything."
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[In reference to a figure in a Renaissance painting.]
"This is St. Who?"
[The figure is subsequently always referred to as St. Who, and a saint in a companion panel becomes "the second St. Who."]
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"You know what they say, 'See Florence and die.'"
"Actually, what they say is, 'See Rome and die.'"
"Well, it makes no difference, since you'd be dead, anyway."
[Actually, it looks from a Web search like what "they" actually say may be, "See Naples and die."]
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...the A-41 that would take them to the center of London, or would have done if they hadn't got off onto the A-nothing and taken a wrong turn.
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He decided he would take dumb rhetorical questions literally from now on.
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The next morning Melrose was awakened at some intransigent hour by Trueblood's banging on his door.
["Intransigent" times of day are new to me!]
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"If I'm getting fat, you-know-who would let me know tout de suite."
"I don't know you-know-who."
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["We were just talking about this!" dept.]
The sign...was decorated with flowers, mushrooms, and little green people Jury took for wood sprites or aliens.
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[People Talking About People You've Never Heard of as Though You're Supposed to Know Who They Are dept.]
"Miss Bosley wants this tout de suite, and you know what she's like!"
Jury smiled and said he didn't. It occurred to him that Basil lived in a world where everybody knew everybody else.
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"You wouldn't even have thought much about Father Christmas until you were four, say. So if you stopped at age five--well, it was hardly worth it, believing. You might as well just have gone ahead and disbelieved."
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"I suppose you know Christmas is the day after tomorrow," said Polly Praed.
She made it sound as though its propinquity were Melrose's fault.
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Melrose loved to find things inside other things and was delighted to see three little tea caddies nesting inside the big one.
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"You said you just got back from Florence."
"Uh-huh."
"But you said it as if that explained something."
"Florence--" Melrose paused. "Florence explains everything!"
***
The middle-aged Americans smiled at him on their way out and he returned the smile. So they smiled again, perhaps thinking they had short-changed this man in the smile department.
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There was a series of clicks and then the tone, which went on and on. Who in hell was calling Jury? The cast of the Royal Shakespeare Company? The Bolshoi Ballet?
***
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unearths some literary gems.
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Page 41 of 65
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Original Content Copyright © 2026 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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