Edmund Clerihew Bentley

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

“What I like about CliveFor being dead.”

“Sir Humphrey DavyOf having discovered sodium.”

“Edward the ConfessorHe slept in the hall.”

“It was a weakness of Voltaire'sHe never overcame.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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