Monday, May 21, 2012

Quote of the Day (Flann O’Brien, With a Nose for Puns)


“Keats and Chapman (in the old days) spent several months in the county Wicklow prospecting for ochre deposits. That was before the days of (your) modern devices for geological divination. With Keats and Chapman it was literally a question of smelling the stuff out….In a field of turnips near Avoca Keats suddenly got the pungent effluvium of a vast ochre mine and lay for hours face down in the muck delightedly permeating his nostrils with the perfume of hidden wealth. No less lucky was Chapman. He had nosed away in the direction of Newtonmountkennedy and came racing back shouting that he too had found a mine. He implored Keats to come and confirm his nasal diagnosis. Keats agreed. He accompanied Chapman to the site and lay down in the dirt to do his sniffing.

'Great mines stink alike,' he said.”—Brian O’Nolan, a.k.a. Flann O’Brien (1911-1966), writing as “Myles na Gopaleen,” in The Best of Myles (Myles na Gopaleen) (1999)

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