“[Reg, played by John Cleese, speaking:] All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Life of Brian (motion picture) (1979)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Was there a real Robinson Crusoe? Daniel Defoe based The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719-20) on the real-life story of Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721), a Scottish sailor who survived for more than four years on the desert island of Juan Fernandez off the Chilean coast. He became a celebrity after his rescue and homecoming in 1709.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities, readings/research
[It’s worth mentioning here, I think, that Thomas Mann was the Nobel Laureate in Literature for 1929. These Rotten Reviews refer, as above, to Buddenbrooks, published in 1901]
“Very few Americans will take the trouble to read this book ot the end. It contains no climaxes, no vivid surprise…. Interesting as the story may be it is too loosely constructed, and for many readers that will prove a barrier.”
Boston Evening Transcript, 1921
“Nothing but two thick tomes in which the author describes the worthless story of worthless people in worthless chatter.”
Edward Engel, in The Art of Folly 1961
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Significant 11s punctuate modern history. The First World War, after consuming some twenty million lives, ended with an armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Eleven is also strongly associated with American and rocket power, for it was Apollo 11 from which Neil Armstrong made the first landing on the moon, The attack on the World Trade Centre was made by American Airlines flight 11, on 11 September 2001, an event now chronicled throughout the world as 9/11. Eleven also has strong numerological connotations as the union of 5 and 6 in the works of Pythagoras and his many followers.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy
“Lardner once visited Paducah to interview Irvin Cobb, later reporting, ‘Mr. Cobb took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he has a complete set.'”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
“Thirty-three is an ancient number of completion: the age when Christ was crucified; the years in which King David reigned. It also marks the number of divinities in the public festivals of the Persian Empire, and in the Hindu tradition three sets of eleven deities appear frequently as an auspicious pantheon of thirty-three. In Muslim tradition the ninety-nine beautiful names of God are recited with rosaries made from thirty-three prayer beads each used thrice, while the Hizb al-Wiqaya is a prayer of personal protection collected from thirty-three verses that invoke Koranic protection and divine names.
In broader cultural contexts, the number was chosen by Dante to structure his Divine Comedy (composed of three sets of thirty-three chapters); it expresses the number of spiritual ranks within Freemasonry; and the blows with which Shakespeare records death being delivered to Julius Caesar (‘When think you that the sword goes up again? Never, till Caesar’s three and thirty wounds be well avenged’).”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy, readings/research
[This botched assessment refers to Bernard Malamud’s second novel, published in 1957, produced as a movie, and included in Time’s All-TIME 100 Novels.]
“Despite its occasional spark of humanity and its melancholy humor this is on the whole too grim a picture to have wide appeal.”
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, readings/research
“The splitting of a hair into forty parts was believed in the magically inclined early times to have been achieved by the six great physicians of antiquity–Plato, Hippocrates, Socrates, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and Galen. The physicians then used it to make a ladder in which science could ascend to the heavens, but there they failed to find a cure for death and returned to earth. Sometimes their number is extended by allowing King Philip II of Macedon to join this band.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged literary oddities, numeracy, philosophy/religion
“Optimism: The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof—an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
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