Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ The window-frames were in, the hardwood floors were down, and there were doors to open and shut. The painter was at work, as well: a charming person, who whistled as he worked, quoted Whittier to me, and produced the most astounding effects, the most pleasing transformations, in the aspect of everything upon which he laid his brush. I have travelled not inconsiderably: I have seen much: I have experienced many emotions: but I contend, and shall always contend, that the thing that contributes most largely to human comfort and to human self-respect is fresh paint. It is soul-satisfying. ”

“ I beg to be understood as speaking exclusively in metaphor when I say that both jump into my lap when I don’t want them, and persist in jumping down when I do. Above all, with neither do I feel wholly assured as to what is going to happen next.
No conversation can be entirely free from embarrassment in which you are uncertain of your companion’s point of view. As regards Miss Berrith, I found that I was constantly making remarks which appeared to me to be as clear as a mirror when they left my lips. ”

“ I said, “which lays in a soap-box filled with straw, of the farmer’s providing, is surely a creature less enviable than the oriole, which constructs its own nest with infinite taste and ingenuity. And so I contend that the man who builds his own house according to his own ideas is more admirable than the man who simply accepts another’s ideas of what a house ought to be. I am building my bungalow around me, as it were, and it is going to fit me to a nicety. ”

“ A gaudy scheme of large, and what I should call floppy, roses against a green trellis suddenly caused me to remember the mumps. There had been roses on the wall opposite my infantile pallet — thirty-two roses across and seventeen roses up and down — and when you squinted your eyes, every second rose had the face of an old lady in a turban and a tippet. The mumps is a tedious disease and aggravated, rather than in the least degree ameliorated, by a continuous process of counting seventeen up and down and thirty-two across. ”

“ To employ a metaphor, I shall be in no fear of dashing out my brains on the lintels because a five-foot man has seen fit to make the door- ways five feet one.”
“Are there no tucks or hems in your house?” asked Miss Berrith.
I looked at her inquiringly.
“Nothing to let out,” she explained, “in case — in case you should happen to grow, Mr. Sands?”
“I am building my bungalow to live in, not to let out,” I replied, with some humour, I fancy. “And I shall be thirty on my next birthday, Miss Berrith. Do you think there is much chance of my growing?” ”

“ You may say (what is undeniable) that its cause was nothing more than a sheet of blue paper, upon which a young man in shirt-sleeves, personally unknown to me, had exercised his craft with a ruling-pen. You will be quite right; but I shall retort that a plan’s a plan for a’ that, and that if you have never had the pleasure of gloating over one of your own you are as much to be pitied as the boy who has never filched a watermelon.
Arbuthnot had asked for the prompt return of the plan, with my indorsement, but I kept it by me for a full week before I could bring myself to part with it ”

“ There is the same impenetrable calm, the same simultaneous purring and sharpening of claws, the same abrupt transition from an attitude of the utmost friendliness to one of the most humiliating disdain. ”

“ Only a week later the cellar walls were standing, and I was able to step inside and look out of a window. The entire aspect of the world undergoes some subtle, psychological transformation from the moment when first you survey it out of your own window. ”

“ Have you ever tried to paste on a flat surface a piece of paper the size of this page? If you have, you will not need to be told that, short of putting up a stovepipe, it is the most maddening feat attempted by civilized man. ”

“ She was constantly on the scene, leaning against a red cedar which stood near to the piazza, and observing operations with an attentive eye. No doubt she was a very nice girl in her way, but she was also in mine, and I resented it. After all, a promising house is not a performing bear. ”

“ There is something about a girl — even about a girl in whom one has no particular interest — which is profoundly disconcerting. If you have ever passed much time in the company of an Angora cat you have probably experienced much the same sensations which are wont to affect me in the society of a girl. ”

“ When one admiral sinks another’s flagship, he immediately orders his boats lowered away to pick up the survivors, and I have a very similar method of procedure as toward those whom I have worsted in an argument. ”