Brass Monkey Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Brass Monkey. Here they are! All 13 of them:

Talk about brass-monkey weather!
M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans)
I’m in a secret underground hideout of a group of monster hunters, filled with magical totems, brass monkeys that move and enough firepower to take over a small country.
Bill Blais (No Good Deed (Kelly & Umber, #1))
I'm not saying it's cold but that brass monkey over there is looking really worried.
Glenn Scrimshaw
Like so many American men, Hayduke loved guns, the touch of oil, the acrid smell of burnt powder, the taste of brass, bright copper alloys, good cutlery, all things well made and deadly.
Edward Abbey (The Monkey Wrench Gang)
The phrase “cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey” is often said to refer to a metallic grid with circular holes in it, set under a pyramid of cannonballs on a ship’s deck to keep it stable. When this “brass monkey” got cold enough, the metal contracted and the cannonballs all popped out. In fact, the phrase means exactly what it says; the fake nautical euphemism is an attempt to make its rude humor more acceptable.
John Lloyd (QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance)
And so I returned to that city in which, in those last hours before reunions, Shaheed and I saw many things which were not true, which were not possible, because our boys would not could not have behaved so badly; we saw men in spectacles with heads like eggs being shot in side-streets, we saw the intelligentsia of the city being massacred by the hundred, but it was not true because it could not have been true, the Tiger was a decent chap, after all, and our jawans were worth ten babus, we moved through the impossible hallucination of the night, hiding in doorways while fired blossomed like flowers, reminding me of the way the Brass Monkey used to set fire to shoes to attract a little attention, there were slit throats being buried in unmarked graves, and Shaheed began his, "No, buddha -- what a thing, Allah, you can't believe your eyes -- no, not true, how can it -- buddha, tell, what's got into my eyes?" And at last the buddha spoke, knowing Shaheed could not hear: "O, Shaheeda," he said, revealing the depths of his fastidiousness, "a person must sometimes choose what he will see and what he will not; look away, look away from there now." But Shaheed was staring at a maidan in which lady doctors were being bayoneted before they were raped, and raped again before they were shot. Above them and behind them, the cool while minaret of a mosque started blindly down upon the scene.
Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
There were some hours to spare before his ship sailed, and having deposited his luggage, including a locked leather despatch-case, on board, he lunched at the Cafe Tewfik near the quay. There was a garden in front of it with palm trees and trellises gaily clad in bougainvillias: a low wooden rail separated it from the street, and Morris had a table close to this. As he ate he watched the polychromatic pageant of Eastern life passing by: there were Egyptian officials in broad-cloth frock coats and red fezzes; barefooted splay-toed fellahin in blue gabardines; veiled women in white making stealthy eyes at passers-by; half-naked gutter-snipe, one with a sprig of scarlet hibiscus behind his ear; travellers from India with solar tepees and an air of aloof British Superiority; dishevelled sons of the Prophet in green turbans, a stately sheik in a white burnous; French painted ladies of a professional class with lace-rimmed parasols and provocative glances; a wild-eyed dervish in an accordion-pleated skirt, chewing betel-nut and slightly foaming at the mouth. A Greek boot-black with box adorned with brass plaques tapped his brushes on it to encourage customers, an Egyptian girl squatted in the gutter beside a gramophone, steamers passing into the Canal hooted on their syrens. ("Monkeys")
E.F. Benson (The Mummy Walks Among Us)
Chappell had brought a Mrs. Frazer to the island. She used an unorthodox divining method, much like water-witching, to detect metals under the surface. She found indications that copper, gold, and silver lay everywhere underground. Dad’s goodwill evaporated when she insisted that she needed to work at the Money Pit. It is clear, from a description of Mrs. Frazer in Dad’s letter to Fred Sparham, dated May 20, that Dad did not believe in the woman’s methods: Chappell brought a woman over who had a secret sort of metal finder. She has been back twice since. Mildred calls her Witch Hazel, and it’s more fun that a barrel of Monkeys. She runs around dangling a piece of plastic hose (clear) with a piece of metal in it that looks like a steel and brass plum bob. She has the whole lot hanging from a chain. She also has a gadget she takes out of a bag that looks like a pair of horns. Then she puts these horns against her forehead and goes around like a Moose. You just can’t believe it at all.
Lee Lamb (Oak Island Family: The Restall Hunt for Buried Treasure)
it’s cold enough to freeze the nuts off a brass monkey,” Mikey said. The kids giggled. “Mikey said nuts,” Nina said. Kate held up a hand, the sign for silence. “The saying comes from the Civil War days, when the cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they’d crack and break off. Breaking the nuts off the brass monkey. Get it?
Jill Shalvis (Rumor Has It (Animal Magnetism, #4))
East would force the US government to finally exploit its untapped domestic oil supplies.
J. Robert Kennedy (Brass Monkey (James Acton Thrillers, #2))
Saw a funny thing this mornin’,” he said. “Saw a monkey in the quad. Bold as brass.” “Oh, yes,” said the Bursar, cheerfully. “That would be the Librarian.” “Got a pet, has he?” “No, you misunderstand me, Archchancellor,” said the Bursar cheerfully. “That was the Librarian.
Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures (Discworld, #10))
The Brass Monkey was never so furious as when anyone spoke to her in words of love; desperate for affection, deprived of it by my overpowering shadow, she had a tendency to turn upon anyone who gave her what she wanted, as if she were defending herself against the possibility of being tricked.
Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)
there is another Reverend Mother now, as Jamila Singer who once, as the Brass Monkey, flirted with Christianity, finds safety shelter peace in the midst of the hidden order of Santa Ignacia
Salman Rushdie (Midnight's Children)