Ernest Bramah Quotes

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

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.

Alas! It is well written, "The road to eminence lies through the cheap and exceedingly uninviting eating-houses."

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.

Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone.

In his countenance this person read an expression of no-encouragement towards his venture.

Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount.

When Ling was communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might find him, he was compelled to add, "the neighbourhood in which this contemptible person resides is that officially known as 'the mean quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery'," and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably received had he been able to describe himself as of "the partly-drained and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends."

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen.

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.