Scent

Famous quotes containing the word scent:

    In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.
    Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)

    I am ... willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never sense the sweet stench of corruption that is all around them—the keen, thin scent of decay that pervades everything and accuses with a terrible accusation the superficial youthfulness, the abounding undergraduate noise, that fills those ancient buildings.
    Thomas Merton (1915–1968)

    Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
    Unfriendly to society’s chief joys.
    William Cowper (1731–1800)