from the desk of H. Bowie...

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Commonplace Book:

Margery Allingham

Brief Bio: English mystery novelist

Lived: 1904-1966

For further info: en.wikipedia.org

Quotes:

“A Dark Procession”

Mercer did not think at all in the accepted sense of the word. Ideas occurred to him and engendered other ideas. But the process which linked any two of them was a dark procession taking place in some subconscious part of the brain.

1934 from the book Dancers in Mourning

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“Occasions When the Intellect Retires Gracefully”

There are occasions when the intellect retires gracefully from a situation entirely behind its decorous control and leaves all the other complicated machinery of the mind to muddle through on its own.

1934 from the book Dancers In Mourning

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“The Only Sign of Mental Activity”

The other pictures varied between the sentimentally lewd and the illustrated Scotch joke variety wherein Glengarried dogs take the place of figures. There were no books and a small writing table with drawers was the only sign of mental activity.

1934 from the book Dancers In Mourning

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“Muddled thinking and self-deception”

Mr. Campion was shocked. There are some people to whom muddled thinking and self-deception are the two most unforgivable crimes in the world.

1938 from the novel The Fashion in Shrouds

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“Merely Thoroughly Outrageous”

He made the discovery with a certain amount of relief, since it took him at least out of the region of pure fantasy and into the merely thoroughly outrageous, with which as a modern he was by now more or less familiar.

1952 from the book The Tiger in the Smoke

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