
“Barometer, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.”
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 526.
Misattributed
“Barometer, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.”
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
“These sudden joys have sudden endings. They burn up in victory like fire and gunpowder.”
Source: Romeo and Juliet
"It isn't meant to be."
Earth Made of Glass (1998)
“Suicide is a sudden accomplishment, a lightning-like deliverance: it is nirvana by violence.”
The New Gods (1969)
I Am A Dancer (1952)
Context: The body is shaped, disciplined, honoured, and in time, trusted. The movement becomes clean, precise, eloquent, truthful. Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. This might be called the law of the dancer's life — the law which governs the outer aspects.
“Their minds were sudden merchants: metaphor, like money, equalised the incommensurable.”
Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 27 (p. 312)
The Centaur (1963)
Context: I miss only, and then only a little, in the late afternoon, the sudden white laughter that like heat lightning bursts in an atmosphere where souls are trying to serve the impossible. My father for all his mourning moved in the atmosphere of such laughter. He would have puzzled you. He puzzled me. His upper half was hidden from me, I knew best his legs.
Source: Keeping Together in Time (1995), Ch. 4: Religious Ceremonies.
“Theres so many fish in the sea
That only rise up in the sweat and smoke like mercury”
Accidents Will Happen
Song lyrics, Armed Forces (1979)