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Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn't notice.
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Julie Andrews Edwards (The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles)
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The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.
But on the inside there is nothing—only the bare gingerbread walls.
It is not a real house—not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.
That’s when the stories can move in.
They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
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Knightley Academy stood out against the moonlight in silhouette, a ramshackle collection of chimneys, turrets and gables. Both boys stopped to take in the sight of the manicured lawns and tangled woods, the soaring chapel and the ivy-covered brick of the headmaster's house. They were home. For this, Henry felt, was home. Not some foreign castle encircled by guard towers, but this cozy, bizarre assortment of buildings with its gossiping kitchen maids and eccentric professors and clever students.
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Violet Haberdasher (The Secret Prince (Knightley Academy, #2))
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No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me.
Life among the dead.
This was where I was meant to be!
What a revelation! And what a place to have it!
I could succeed at whatever I chose. I could, for instance, become an undertaker. Or a pathologist. A detective, a gravedigger, a tombstone maker, or even the world's greatest murderer.
Suddenly the world was my oyster—even if it was a dead one.
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Alan Bradley (As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce, #7))
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Pumblechook made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive and drove his own chaise-cart — over Everybody — it was agreed that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out, “No!” with the feeble malice of a tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously set at naught,— not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out: which was not calculated to inspire confidence.
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Charles Dickens (Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels)
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I bring the match near, I light a flimsy piece of paper, and, behold, my gesture receives inspired help from the things around, as if the chimney and the dry wood had been waiting for me to set the light, or as though the match had been nothing but a magic incantation, a call of like to like answered beyond all
imagination.
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Maurice Merleau-Ponty (The Prose of the World (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy))
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[T]hough she clung to the cold stones of the chimney, Leta whispered, "We are never obliged to be only what they have told us we are. Not if we were meant to be more.
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Anne Elisabeth Stengl (Dragonwitch (Tales of Goldstone Wood, #5))
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In any case, the expression ‘real life’ in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor-cars are more ‘alive’ than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more ‘real’ than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obsolete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!
For my part, I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley station is more ‘real’ than the clouds. And as an artefact I find it less inspiring than the legendary dome of heaven. The bridge to platform 4 is to me less interesting than Bifröst guarded by Heimdall with the Gjallarhorn. From the wildness of my heart I cannot exclude the question whether railway-engineers, if they had been brought up on more fantasy, might not have done better with all their abundant means than they commonly do.
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays)
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Robert Orr, a dedicated resident of Black Mountain, NC, whose expertise lies in alternate heating solutions. Since 1979, he has successfully owned and operated Black Mountain Stove and Chimney. With a focus on wood and gas appliances, including gas fireplaces and firepits, Robert has established himself as a go-to professional in the field. His unwavering determination to finish strong and maintain profitability serves as his ultimate inspiration.
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Robert Orr Black Mountain NC
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Christmas by Maisie Aletha Smikle
Smiles gifts and laughter fill the air
Families so dear
Gather and share
Love and happy cheer
Mary gave birth to Christ Jesus
Gloriously famed is He
People are happy on His birthday
They meet to celebrate this day
On Christ's birthday
There were gifts of myrrh
Frankincense and gold
Celebrating His birth that was foretold
Christmas day is Christ’s birthday
Once a year
Christ is cheered
For coming into the world
Woes and foes
Are forgotten
And joy and peace
Are release
Lights blink
Twinkle twinkle
Beckoning good wishes
To come in
Snow falling on roof tops
Cookies cooling on stove tops
Smoke whistling from the chimneys
Calling out to Santa on his sleigh
Don't come down tonight
It is frosty as frost bite
If you come down the chimney
You will be toasty as a toast
So on and on Santa goes
Round and round the globe
Delivering good wishes and happy cheers
And thanking God for Christ’s birth
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Maisie Aletha Smikle
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In the center of Climentoro, a town in Huehuetenango, a dozen large white houses rose above the village’s traditional wooden huts like giant monuments. The structures were made of concrete and fashioned with archways, colonnaded porches, and elaborate moldings; some even boasted facades decorated with paintings of American flags. Their owners, who lived in the US, had sent money home to build American-inspired houses for when they returned, but few did. One three-story house with a faux-brick chimney was empty. The family of twelve had migrated a few years ago, leaving the vacant construction behind. Vecinos fantasmas, Feliciano Pérez, a local farmer, called them—ghost neighbors.
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Jonathan Blitzer (Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis)
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The first and still the most famous locked-room mystery is said to be The Murders in the Rue Morgue, written in 1841 by Edgar Allan Poe, the man who inspired Sherlock Holmes. Here, a mother and a daughter are brutally murdered in their flat, the daughter stuffed up a chimney, but the door and the shutters are securely fastened from inside and the flat is four floors up from the street, with no way to climb in. The story has a great ending, but one that doesn’t really play fair. I’m not sure a modern writer would get away with it.
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Anthony Horowitz (Close to Death (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #5))