
“Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”
Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
English Fairy Tales (1890), More English Fairy Tales (1894), Pied Piper
“Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.”
Letter to Bolingbroke (March 21, 1729); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Not every pigeon is a rat with wings. Not every rat with wings is a dove of peace.”
Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch.14.
Context: Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company... When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.
“That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into.”
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 71
“Jump in a hole without looking, and there’ll be a snake in it every time.”
Hurin
(15 November 1990)
“Rats in paradise! Rats in paradise!”
Song lyrics, Mutiny (1993), Mutiny in Heaven