Chimney Quotes & Sayings

So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way. — Vincent Van Gogh

Now I see things differently. It took me some time, but I know the secret now. Freedman Town serves a good purpose
not for the people who live there, Lord knows; people stuck there by poverty, by prejudice, by laws that keep them from moving or working. Freedman Town's purpose is for the rest of the world. The world that sits, like Martha, with dark glasses on, staring from a distance, scared but safe. Create a pen like that, give people no choice but to live like animals, and then people get to point at them and say 'Will you look at those animals? That's what kind of people those people are.' And that idea drifts up and out of Freedman Town like chimney smoke, black gets to mean poor and poor to mean dangerous and all the words get murked together and become one dark idea, a cloud of smoke, the smokestack fumes drifting like filthy air across the rest of the nation. — Ben H. Winters

A cold blast hit him and he laughed at the sting as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply.
Such a good liar he was. Such a good one.
Everyone thought he was fine because he'd camo'd his little problems. He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch. Set his wristwatch to go off every half hour to beat back the dream. Ate though he wasn't angry. Laughed though he found nothing funny.
And he'd always smoked like a chimney. — J.R. Ward

Eve showed Aidan how to rake the range. "I think when we're married we might have something more modern," he grumbled. "No, surely with the eight children we can have them stoking it, going up the chimney even. — Maeve Binchy

The hand that once wielded both sword and axe now aches after an evening of the quill. When I wipe the tip of one clean, I often wonder how many buckets of ink I have used in a lifetime. How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world? I do not know. I — Robin Hobb

With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they'd be cooking chips at this hour was anyone's guess. — Adrian McKinty

Sebastian Grey.
The worrds rang like a miserable moan in her head. On the list of men she ought not to be kissing, he had to rank at the top, along with the King, Lord Liverpool, and the chimney sweep. — Julia Quinn

The whole concept of some stranger making his way down our chimney - not that we had one - suggested burglary more readily than generosity. Any Santa who tried it would have gotten a bullet in his holly, jolly keister. — Thomm Quackenbush

The house remembered her. Laurel did not consider herself a romantic, but the sense was so strong that for a moment she had no trouble believing that the combination before her of wooden boards and red chimney bricks, or dappled roof tiles and gabled windows at odd angles, was capable of remembrance. — Kate Morton

She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.
And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find
herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella. — Terry Pratchett

Maple. Maypole
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.
Woolen. Woman.
Moon at night.
Willow. Window.
Candlelight.
Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.
Barrel. Barley.
Stone and stave.
Wind and water.
Misbehave. — Patrick Rothfuss

Because obviously the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist. If only life were that great
instead of burnt flesh and turning into ash we had money-giving fairies, bunnies laying pink eggs, and fat men coming down my chimney bearing presents ... — Christina Channelle

Make the doors upon a woman's wit,
and it will out at the casement;
shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;
stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. — William Shakespeare

Is there any finer phrase in the English language than Midsummer Day? There are no words to touch it for conjuring. It is the beginning of blooming roses and ripening corn, of days that stretch on, reaching for midnight until the spangled blue velvet of night descends and beginning again before cockcrow, when the dew jewels the grass like diamonds scattered while the earth slumbers. I, of course, expected rain. Not just rain, but torrential, heaving, biblical rain - the sort to set arks afloat. Everything else had gone awry, why not that? But when I awoke on Midsummer Day, the sun greeted me cordially, coaxing the dew from the grass and the early roses as a light breeze wafted the scent of charred chimney over the gardens. I stood at the window and breathed in deeply all the scents of summer, fresh grass and carp ponds and blossoming herb knots until the whole of it mingled in my head and made me dizzy. A bee floated lazily in the window and out again as if beckoning me to follow. — Deanna Raybourn

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door — Bram Stoker

Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way. — Vincent Van Gogh

Swept yer chimney!" D howled. "Aw shit, that is fuckin' rich! — Jane Seville

Maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we've been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney. — Meg Ryan

I was lookin' high an' low for them Reds everywhere, I was lookin' in the sink an' underneath the chair. I looked way up my chimney hole, I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl. — Bob Dylan

Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed. — G.K. Chesterton

From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. — Thomas Hobbes

I'd like to start with the chimney jokes - I've got a stack of them. The first one is on the house. — Tim Vine

London
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow;
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. — William Blake

In 1788, the Chimney Sweepers Act was passed in Parliament, preventing master sweeps from employing children under eight (children over eight were allowed to be apprenticed). — Siddhartha Mukherjee

She was too honest, too natural for this frightened man; too remote from his tidy laws. She was, after all, a country girl; disordered, hysterical, loving. She was muddled and mischievous as a chimney-jackdaw, she made her nest of rags and jewels, was happy in the sunlight, squawked loudly at danger, pried and was insatiably curious, forgot when to eat or ate all day, and sang when sunsets were red. — Laurie Lee

Your goal is to achieve the best results by following their wishes. If they want you to build a house upside down standing on its chimney, it's up to you to do it. — Richard Morris Hunt

He loved the interminable winter nights, when the dissatisfied wind mewed through the keyhole, and gusts of acrid smoke were driven down through the chimney; the imperfect silence when you awoke, as of a conversation hastily lulled, objects being hastily replaced. 'Blow, blow thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.' Why was it that he felt so perfectly attuned to winter, to its fatalistic expectation of the worst, then, when the worst came, its rustic heroisms and shouldering of burdens, improvised ingeniousness, constructive despair? — Violet Trefusis

The image by Barry Blitt of Barack Obama and Michelle in the White House with him dressed as a terrorist, her dressed as an Angela Davis character, a flag burning in the chimney, a portrait of Bin Laden on the wall is an image I'm extremely proud of. — Francoise Mouly

If SANTA CLAUS came down the chimney in a f**king jogging suit, you wouldn't even know it was him. — Wayne Coyne

Isn't it fun,' she said and she smiled. I let the oars rest in the rowlocks. The water around the boat fell silent, and silently the cabin was floating up above the rocks and the smoke rose softly from the chimney, and how impossible it was to grasp that in the end something as fine as this could be ground into dust. — Per Petterson

It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.) — Primo Levi

Been having a fight with your blankets, Septimus?" A familiar voice echoed down the chimney. "Looks like you lost," the voice continued with a chuckle. "Not wise to take on a pair of blankets, lad. One, maybe, but two blankets always gang up on you. Vicious things, blankets. — Angie Sage

She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a rumbling of little cart-wheels, and the sound of a good many voices all talking together: she made out the words: "Where's the other ladder? - Why, I hadn't to bring but one. Bill's got the other - Bill! Fetch it here, lad! - Here, put 'em up at this corner - No, tie 'em together first - they don't reach half high enough yet - Oh! they'll do well enough. Don't be particular - Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope - Will the roof bear? - Mind that loose slate - Oh, it's coming down! Heads below!" (a loud crash) - "Now, who did that? - It was Bill, I fancy - Who's to go down the chimney? - Nay, I shan't! You do it! - That I wo'n't, then! - Bill's got to go down - Here, Bill! The master says you've got to go down the chimney! — Lewis Carroll

Such Roots as are soft, your best way is to dry in the Sun, or else hang them up in the Chimney corner upon a string; as for such as are hard you may dry them any where. — Nicholas Culpeper

Paris. Reuters News Agency informs us that the gigantic and entirely useless structure of iron rods with which the French intend to astound visitors to the Fifteenth World Fair has finally been completed. This dangerous project is causing justified anxiety among the inhabitants of Paris. How can this interminable factory chimney be allowed to tower over Paris, dwarfing all the marvelous monuments of the capital with its ridiculous height? Experienced engineers express concern about whether such a tall and relatively slim structure, erected on a foundation only a third of its own height, is capable of withstanding the pressure of the wind. — Boris Akunin

As she walked, the horror stories she'd heard from Felix and the others became real. This is what their underground efforts were fighting against. These camps, these guards, were reality to thousands of people ... Reality to the person who had just made the trip up the chimney. If they did not stop this madness, it would be the end of them all. — Tricia Goyer

Smoke poured from every chimney, for the day was cold. The thought of all those coal-grates and wood-stoves made me wary of fire, for these buildings were little more than tinder and brown paper, putting on airs of architecture. — Robert Charles Wilson

Stud," D repeated, growly and low. Jack snorted. "You got a better word for a guy who's swept my chimney five times in one night? — Jane Seville

Horror. Horrible. The things people do these days to disrespect the dead are just awful. So we're going to respect my dead friend properly." "By stuffing the chimney full of fireworks." "By stuffing the chimney full of fireworks!" She agrees. — Sara Wolf

The south-wind strengthens to a gale, / Across the moon the clouds fly fast, / The house is smitten as with a flail, / The chimney shudders to the blast. — Robert Bridges

What is red, white and black all over and says "Ho! Ho!"? Santa Claus after he has came down the chimney. — Beverly Adams

Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow. — Denise Levertov

November
with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes
days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew. — L.M. Montgomery

Andras went through the Sortie doors and walked out into a city that no longer contained his brother. He walked on benumbed feet in the new black Oxfords his brother had brought him from Hungary. He didn't care who passed him on the street or where he was going. If he had stepped off the curb into the air instead of down into the gutter, if he had climbed the void above the cars and between the buildings until he was looking down at the rooftops with their red-clay chimney pots, their irregular curving grid, and if he had then kept climbing until he was wading through the slough of low-lying clouds in the winter sky, he would have felt no shock or joy, no wonder or surprise, just the same leaden dampness in his limbs. — Julie Orringer

It is one thing to deceive a king, and quite another to hide from the cricket in the rushes and the little bird in the chimney. — George R R Martin

Personally, I think that the concept of an old white guy with a beard in a red coat coming down a chimney in the middle of the night or a fairy with a tooth fetish sliding things under my pillow while I sleep would be way freakier, but no, for kids it's monsters. Monsters — Jim Gaffigan

You may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you - 'Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window - you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not a Chancellor of the Exchequer - but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp? — Wilkie Collins

The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born. — G.K. Chesterton

in the crook of her elbow as she went. Above her, over an apartment building and a tavern, she saw the expanse of a large square building with a flat roof and a single cylinder chimney. It was a tan-brick warehouse with dark broken windows. An abandoned bird's — Charlie N. Holmberg

Bob slid his chair back and moved the coal-oil lamp from the kitchen to the sitting room. He said, "Oftentimes things seem impossible up until they're attempted." Then he lidded the chimney glass with his palm and suffocated the light. — Ron Hansen

Only one acorn in a thousand ever grew large enough to fight rabbits; the rest were drowned at birth in the prairie sea. It is a warming thought that this one wasn't, and thus lived to garner eighty years of June sun. It is this sunlight that is now being released, through the intervention of my axe and saw, to warm my shack and my spirit through eighty gusts of blizzard. And with each gust a wisp of smoke from my chimney bears witness, to whomsoever it may concern, that the sun did not shine in vain. — Aldo Leopold

Back up shall we? When my brother, the crazy chicken warrior, turned into a falcon and went up the pyramid's chimney with his new friend, the fruit bat, he left me playing nurse to two very wounded people - which I didn't appreciate, and which I wasn't particularly good at. — Rick Riordan

A seventeenth-century house can be recognized by its steep roof, massive central chimney and utter porchlessness. Some of those houses have a second-story overhang, emphasizing their medieval look. — John Updike

Through the station went a goods train, spitting sparks from its chimney. Viktoria stood at the window and combed those sparks out of her hair. — Bohumil Hrabal

Check your pockets, my chimney-child. — Catherynne M Valente

He looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows. — Thomas Hardy

'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me. — Ruth Rendell

Alessandro watched as Luke burrowed his nose in the snow and then shook his small body. "Well, that depends on whether you want a male or a female horse." "Mmm. I tink I want a boy horsie. Girl horsies have babies and dat's too much trouble." Alessandro bit back a laugh. "Male horse it is then. Let's see. My favourite horse's name is Abbott." "A But?" Will asked laughing. "Abbott," Alessandro corrected. "Chimney," Will suddenly decided, stopping. Alessandro blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry, did you say 'Chimney'?" "It make sense," Will assured him. "Santa come down da chimney and he is my pesent, right? So his name be Chimney." "I agree. Quite logical," Alessandro nodded. "Well, dat one ting on my list. Der be more." "Duly noted," he said. — E. Jamie

The Mother Of God
The threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.
Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?
What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart's blood stop
Or strikes a sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up? — W.B.Yeats

After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (including a stoppage at a small town, where we were saluted by a gun considerably bigger than our own chimney), we reached Hartford, — Charles Dickens

But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up into the sky and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rainforests in Brazil, or in snow somewhere. — Mark Haddon

Across the street, there were parties at other windows. The sky was fading behind the roof peaks and chimney tops, which stood out like cardboard cutout silhouettes, and I looked from them to the lit windows, and back again. A flock of birds, pigeons probably, wheeled across the sky, heading home before dark. — Jo Walton

No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood. — H.P. Lovecraft

Writing was a chimney for my blazing ambitions. — Storm Jameson

Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes - gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. — Charles Dickens

The duty of the inn-keeper,is to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty
sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty small
purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling families
respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child
clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner,the arm-chair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattress
and the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up the
mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, to
make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog
eats! — Victor Hugo

What the hell are you doing up there?'
So he slipped, of course, because he was startled, and because fate, having been so kind to him as to award him this ecstasy, retributively was going to kill him now. He lost his footing and grabbed for the chimney but missed. Head over thighs he rolled out like a child's toy, smashed into the poking branches of the damn pear tree, which probably saved his life, breaking his fall. He landed with a thud on a bed of lettuces, and the wind was knocked out of him, mortifyingly so, through all available orifices.
Oh, brilliant,' said the voice. 'The trees are dropping their fruits early this year. — Gregory Maguire

But I see you're not standing in a bleedin' shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin' shape, you're silhouetted against the bleedin' light and your sabre's shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep's bleedin' ear'ole! Explain!"
"It's because of the one C, sarge!" said Polly, still staring straight ahead.
"And that is?"
"Colour, sarge! I'm wearing bleedin' red and white in a bleedin' grey forest, sarge! — Terry Pratchett

At present I am using a good sized bedroom in the 2 bedroom house here as a studio, and it is large enough to step back from my canvases, and has a good north light. It should serve very well until I can afford to have the storeroom half of the back building lined and insulated and a chimney put in. That may be in about two years. — E. J. Hughes

And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer
apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I mean the things that we have and that we think are so solid - they're like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into. You know how wreath of smoke goes up from a chimney, and seems all thick and black and busy against the sky, as if it were going to do such important things and last forever, and you see it getting thinner and thinner - and then, in such a little while, it isn't there at all; nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever. — Booth Tarkington

What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? — Diane Setterfield

Just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable it will some day be larger than an elephant, - just as we know, when we see weeds and dandelions growing more and more thickly in a garden, that they must, in spite of all our efforts, grow taller than the chimney-pots and swallow the house from sight, so we know and reverently acknowledge, that when any power in human politics has shown for any period of time any considerable activity, it will go on until it reaches to the sky. — G.K. Chesterton

I have discovered the secret of happiness - it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy. — John Burroughs

But my absolute favorite was when you said I was the Santa Claus Magic Mike, and I could bring my presents down your chimney all year round." I — Tijan

Smoke rose straight up from the chimney, as if the house raised its hand. As if the house knew the answer. — Sere Prince Halverson

There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

As she looked, the smoke puffing out of the chimney stopped curling upward and began to take on the shape of a wavering black question mark.
Sebastian laughed. "I think that means, Who's there?"
Clary pulled her coat closer around her. "It looks like something out of a fairy tale."
"Are you cold?" Sebastian put his arm around her. Immediately the smoke curling from the chimney stopped forming itself into question marks and began puffing out in the shape of lopsided hearts. — Cassandra Clare

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? — Bertrand Russell

In civilised society law is the chimney through which all that smoke discharges itself that used to circulate through the whole house, — Walter Scott

Come, come," said Mrs. Wiggins. "Stop your fighting, animals. If there are swallows in that chimney, it means that there hasn't been a fire built in the house in a long time. And that means that nobody lives there. Let's get inside." Bang, — Walter R. Brooks

But there, set as in the crater of a mountain of sand, and inaccessible to mortal footstep, stands unperishing the glory of the earth. And its fragrance is drawn up to heaven, as through a wide chimney; and from its branches hangs the undying fruit, lustrous and opalescent; and in each shining globe the world and its starry system are reflected in miniature, moving westwards; but at night they glow, a cluster of tender moons.
("The Accursed Cordonnier") — Bernard Capes

Is Adrian here?"
"Who?"
"Adrian. Tall. Brown hair. Green eyes."
She frowned. "Do you mean Jet?"
"I ... I'm not sure. Does he smoke like a chimney?"
The girl nodded sagely. "Yup. You must mean Jet. — Richelle Mead

Apparently, he uses disguises sometimes in the course of his investigations. In his liaison with Mariah, he used them for discretion. He came to her once dressed as a chimney sweep. Quite invigorating, don't you think? — Deanna Raybourn

Every year, dads will dress up as Santa and try to surprise their kids by coming down the chimney, and every year, a dad gets stuck and dies. — Kyle Dunnigan

He had never spoken to Uncle Richard, but he knew that he was a radiologist who put tubes into people's groins and pushed them up into their brains to clear blockages like chimney sweeps did and this was a glorious idea. — Mark Haddon

But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, - so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, - that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminiscences. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nick, fetch my car, fetch my clothes, sweep the chimney, make my bed, watch my psychopath, fetch my slippers. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Ellie had a feeling he thought she was exaggerating. "I am not jesting. Yesterday she presented me with two lists. The first consisted of chores I must perform in addition to those I already do."
"What, did she have you cleaning out the chimney?" Charles teased.
"Yes!" Ellie burst out. "Yes, and it was not a joke!" — Julia Quinn

Tell him the wedding is being prepared, only there won't be any music at our wedding: deacons will sing instead of pipes and mandolins. I won't step out to dance with my bridegroom: they will bear me away. Dark, dark will be my house: of maple wood it will be, and instead of a chimney there will be a cross on its roof! — Nikolai Gogol

P.S. If it's not a secret, will you tell me how you got my dollhouse inside our living room last Christmas? I know its too big to fit down the chimney. I measured. — Joanne Fluke

She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don't come out. — Janet Frame

Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that's what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars. — Ray Bradbury

The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. — T. S. Eliot

I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth. — Gary Shteyngart

One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls,
When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops.
He mocks the guinea, challenges
The crow, inciting various modes.
The sparrow requites one, without intent. — Wallace Stevens

I have turned into a pumpkin I am poor
The ball is over and I did not dance
My heart stops beating I am sad
Nothing can ever be so beautiful again
Nothing can

This is my usual corner I'm at home
Here are the pots and spoons and darkness
I did not dance and now I am alone
My death drops down the chimney
My heart stops — Thomas M. Disch

We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins. — Andy Rooney

When I set out from the boy's attic window, my head was so full of competing plans and complex stratagems that I didn't look where I was going and flew straight into a chimney.
Something symbolic in that. It's what fake freedom does for you. — Jonathan Stroud