Ruined castles are actually the bones of once vibrant creations, not only alive but kicking.  (You've surely heard of flying buttresses.)  Our illustration of "a real live castle" is from Our Boys in Ireland by Henry Willard French, 1891.

An illustration from Peg Woffington by Charles Reade (1868).  The caption reads: "Oh, yes! you are beautiful, you are gifted, and the eyes of thousands wait upon your every word and look."

Uroboric yin-yang fish: an illustration from an 1896 issue of The Idler magazine.

A precursor to Victor Borge: According to H. Allen Smith, Vladimir de Pachmann would call for a book to elevate himself on a piano stool that was supposedly too low, then pretend he was now too high, and then remove one page to get the height just right.

An illustration from The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story by H. Rider Haggard (1911).  The caption reads: "Changed indeed, mysterious, wonderful."

"We can – rather surprisingly – owe duties to the dead and also to a great range of anonymous future people." —Tom Bentley, The Moral Universe

We learn in the BBC series The Mighty Boosh that "there are over seventeen mirrors in the mirror world."  We find a precursor in The Century of Louis XIV by Frances Cashel Hoey, 1896.

An illustration from Gentlemen All and Merry Companions by Ralph Wilhelm Bergengren (1922).  The caption reads: "There was a long, white flash in the moonlight."

A precursor to the Death By Lemon cake recipe.  An illustration from an 1879 issue of Punch magazine.

Q: How do the eponymous Cat People escape being caged?

An illustration from The Bachelors Club by Laurel Zangwill (1891).  The caption reads: "Again the voice came from the centre of the curling rings, 'I am your father's ghost.'"

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

photo by Cobalt 123

"'I just came out with a dirty joke DVD.  I'll have to send you a copy.'  The stupid part about me saying this was that it was apropos of nothing."
—Gilbert Gottfried, Rubber Balls and Liquor (2011)

An illustration from The King of the Conjurors by James Skipp Borlase (1877).  The caption reads: "Buried in the sand."

"Farce is only funny if it is true."
—Mikhail Bulgakov, Zoya's Apartment: A Tragic Farce in Three Acts (1991)

"Tell my secret? No, indeed, not I; / Perhaps some day, who knows?"  From Through Woodland and Meadow and Other Poems by Marie Low, 1891.

An illustration from The Cup of Fury by Rupert Hughes (1919).  The caption reads: "Aren't you afraid to push on when you can't see where you're going?"

An illustration from In the Sweet and Dry by Christopher Morley and Bart Haley (1919), illustrated by Gluyas Williams.  The caption reads: "'Hush,' said Quimbleton nervously. 'Someone may be watching us. ... You see I water the flowers with champagne.'"

A glass half frozen

Never boils.

An illustration from The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story by H. Rider Haggard (1911).  The caption reads: "Guided, guarded by the spirits of dead suns."