Clergyman's

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

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.
- Ernest Bramah

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.
- Ernest Bramah

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.
- Ernest Bramah

Ernest Bramah's China, then, is the fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at all. He wrote of it in a prose so perfectly conceived that it becomes a miracle of style. As Hilaire Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of Bramah's stories is a trick he achieves by pretending to adapt the flavor of Chinese literary conventions into the English. But the thing I love most about the tales is their irony and the brilliance of their wit.
- Ernest Bramah

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.
- Ernest Bramah

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.
- Ernest Bramah

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.
- Ernest Bramah

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

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