Ernest Bramah Quotes

However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops.

Eat in the dark the bargain that you purchased in the dusk.

After secretly observing the unstudied grace of her movements, the most celebrated picture-maker of the province burned the implements of his craft, and began life anew as a trainer of performing elephants.

Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings,"how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?"
"For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

It is well said: 'He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains,' replied Sun Wei, a refined bitterness weighing the import of his words. "Truly this person's friends in the Upper Air are a never-failing lantern behind his back."

At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension in order to conceal the direction of her flight.

However deep you dig a well it affords no refuge in the time of flood.

When an alluring woman comes in at the door," warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, "discretion may be found up the chimney". It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: "The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly.

Do not adjust your sandals while passing through a melon-field, nor yet arrange your hat beneath an orange-tree.

The one-legged never stumble.

At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude – a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery.

Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider.

There are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night.