Vicarage Quotes & Sayings

My biographer said that my parties reminded them of a vicarage tea party, with sex thrown in. — Cynthia Payne

The gardener, an old sailor, made him a hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weeping willow. And here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to the vicarage, reading, reading passionately. — W. Somerset Maugham

You must come to the Vicarage, then, next week, said the vicar. — Neil Gaiman

...And of course they'll get their milk from us, because Gooch's milk in the village really can't be trusted. I do hope, Henry, the vicarage drains are all right if Martin is to go there, because the French are rather vague about drains.'

'Yes, but darling, they aren't bringing their drains with them'... — Angela Thirkell

How can you have faith in human nature when you think that a sewer and certain moments of Schumann or Brahms are connected by secret, shadowy, subterranean passageways. — Ernesto Sabato

One of the most notorious slogans of ultra-nationalism in Turkey has been 'Either love it or leave it!' It is meant to block all kinds of fault-finding from within. The implication is that if you criticize your country or your state, you are showing disrespect, not to mention a lack of patriotism, in which case you had better take your leave. If you do stay, however, the implication is that you love your homeland, in which case you had better not voice any critical opinions. This black-and-white mentality is an obstacle to social progress. But it is not only Turkish ultra- nationalism that is fuelled by a dualistic mentality. All kinds of extremist, exclusivist discourses are similarly reductionist and sheathed in tautology. Either/or approaches ask us to make a choice, all the while spreading the fallacy that it is not possible to have multiple belongings, multiple roots, multiple loves. — Elif Shafak

The cafe was empty, but the cook was unscrewing the outlet plate above my seat. I took my book into the bathroom and read while he finished. When I emerged, the cook was gone and a woman was ready to sit in my seat.
- Excuse me, this is my table.
- Did you reserve it?
- Well, no, but it's my table.
- Did you actually sit here? There's nothing on the table and you have your coat on.
I stood there mutely. If this were an episode of Midsomer Murders she would surely be found strangled in a wild ravine behind an abandoned vicarage. — Patti Smith

In the December rain, the vicarage was especially damp and soggy, with an aura of boiled eggs and old books - a perfect setting for our encounter: dark, brooding, and simply reeking of secrets and tales told in an earlier time. Cynthia, — Alan Bradley

In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children. — Herodotus

When we get christened or married or die, we drift naturally in the direction of the church. And in moments of crisis, when our spiritual Tom-Tom is no longer telling us what to do, we find ourselves scrabbling at the vicarage door. — Tom Hollander

I was a child, and in 1942, I was evacuated to the Cotswolds with my mother, who was a teacher - she went with her school. I lived in one house in the village, and my mother was in the vicarage. — Ruth Rendell

It's good to buy a large company with fine businesses when the price is beaten down over worry about one problem. — Henry Earl Singleton

In the weeks that had passed since she had met Rupert Stonebird at the vicarage her interest in him had deepened, mainly because she had not seen him again and had therefore been able to build up a more satisfactory picture of him than if she had been able to check with reality. — Barbara Pym

Writer Somerset Maugham, after his parents deaths, spent a few stultifying years in his uncle's vicarage. Later, in his teens at a boarding-school, having lost his belief in the existence of God said: "The whole horrible structure, based not on the love of God, but on the fear of hell, tumbled down like a house of cards." — Selina Hastings, Countess Of Huntingdon

It is written in the code of love: He who strikes the blow is himself struck down. — Hadewijch

without touching Annabelle, she managed to urge her along toward the vicarage. — Marion Chesney

I spent a lot of time at my grandparents in the school holidays, and the only books in the house were a copy of the Bible and Agatha Christie's 'Murder at the Vicarage.' I developed a taste for murder mysteries and then later discovered libraries, second-hand bookshops, and jumble sales. — Val McDermid

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) — W. H. Auden