There is a skeleton in every house. [ Proverb ]
Truth is the skeleton of appearances. [ A. de Musset ]
Hunting after happiness is like hunting after a lost sheep in the wilderness - when you find it, the chances are that it is a skeleton. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Occasionally a single anecdote opens a character: biography has its comparative anatomy, and a saying or a sentiment enables the skilful hand to construct the skeleton. [ Willmott ]
It's not good to let any kid near a container that has a skull and crossbones on it, because there might be a skeleton costume inside and the kid could put it on and really scare you. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Written on a Skull: Lamp, what hast thou done with the flame? Skeleton, what hast thou done with the soul? Deserted cage, what hast thou done with the bird? Volcano, what hast thou done with the lava? [ Mme. A. Segalas ]
Morals are an acquirement - like music, like a foreign language, like piety, poker, paralysis - no man is born with them. I wasn't myself, I started poor. I hadn't a single moral. There is hardly a man in this house that is poorer than I was then. Yes, I started like that - the world before me, not a moral in the slot. Not even an insurance moral. I can remember the first one I ever got. I can remember the landscape, the weather, the - I can remember how everything looked. It was an old moral, an old second-hand moral, all out of repair, and didn't fit, anyway. But if you are careful with a thing like that, and keep it in a dry place, and save it for processions, and Chautauquas, and World's Fairs, and so on, and disinfect it now and then, and give it a fresh coat of whitewash once in a while, you will be surprised to see how well she will last and how long she will keep sweet, or at least inoffensive. When I got that mouldy old moral, she had stopped growing, because she hadn't any exercise; but I worked her hard, I worked her Sundays and all. Under this cultivation she waxed in might and stature beyond belief, and served me well and was my pride and joy for sixty-three years; then she got to associating with insurance presidents, and lost flesh and character, and was a sorrow to look at and no longer competent for business. She was a great loss to me. Yet not all loss. I sold her - ah, pathetic skeleton, as she was - I sold her to Leopold, the pirate King of Belgium; he sold her to our Metropolitan Museum, and it was very glad to get her, for without a rag on, she stands 57 feet long and 16 feet high, and they think she's a brontosaur. Well, she looks it. They believe it will take nineteen geological periods to breed her match. [ Mark Twain, Seventieth Birthday speech ]