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 . . . FLATTERY see: "APPLAUSE" see: "COMPLIMENTS" see: "PRAISE" see: "COMMUNICATION" for other related links If you are flattering a woman, it pays to be a little more subtle. You don't have to bother with men, they believe any compliment automatically. --Alan Ayckbourn (b. 1939) English dramatist. _Round and Round the Garden_ [1975] - Meddle not with him that flattereth with his lips. --Bible "Proverbs" 20:19 Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. --Bible --Prov. 27:6 NIV - A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool. --Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803—1873) British novelist and politician. In Andrew Steinmetz _Gems of Genius; or, Words of the Wise_, p. 180 [1838]. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver. --Edmund Burke (1729—1797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ [1790] - Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking that she must in some degree be conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends for it. --Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773) British writer and politician. _Letter to His Son_ [16 October 1747] Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome. --Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773) British writer and politician. _Letter to His Son_ [5 September 1748] - If you mean to profit, learn to praise. --Charles Churchill (1731—1764) English poet. "Gotham", bk. II [1764] - Some who affect to dislike flattery may yet be flattered indirectly by a well-seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals. --C.C. Colton (1780—1832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, LXXXIII [1820] Some indeed there are, who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are, nevertheless, to be flattered; by being told that they do despise it. --C.C. Colton (1780—1832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, CCCCXLIV [1820] Power multiplies flatterers, and flatterers multiply our delusions, by hiding us from ourselves. --C.C. Colton (1780—1832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, XXV [1821 ed.] Imitation is the sincerest of flattery. --C.C. Colton (1780—1832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, CCXVII [1820] & see: Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. --anon. Quoted in _South Pacific Bulletin_ vol 9 & 10 [1920]. & note: Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. ... If you want to influence someone, listen to what he says. --Dr. Joyce Brothers [Joyce Diane Bauer] (b. 1927) American psychologist and advice columnist. Attributed in William Safire, Leonard Safir (eds.) _Words of Wisdom: More Good Advice_, p. 221 [1989]. - We swallow at one gulp a lie which flatters us, but only drop by drop a truth which is bitter to us. --Denis Diderot (1713—1784) French writer and philosopher. Attributed in Rev. James Wood (ed.) _Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 529 [1893]. We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882) American philosopher and poet. _Essays, Second Series_, Essay V "Gifts" [1844] Crows pick out the eyes of the dead when they are no longer of any use. But flatterers destroy the souls of the living by blinding their eyes. --Epictetus (55—135) Greek philosopher. _Fragments_ XCVIII Man may content himself with the applause of the world and the homage paid to his intellect; but woman's heart has holier idols. --Augusta Jane Evans (1835—1909) American novelist. _Beulah_ [1860] Flattery is never so agreeable as to our blind side. Commend a fool for his wit, or a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosoms. --Henry Fielding (1707-1754) English novelist and dramatist. _The Modern Husband_, III, iv [1732] ^^ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894) Holmes's love of flattery continued unabated into his old age, and he used his hardness of hearing to indulge it. "I am a trifle deaf you know," he would say to someone who had just praised his latest work. "Do you mind repeating that a little louder." --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.] ^^ - Cautious age suspects the flattering form, And only credits what experience tells. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. "Irene" (his only play, first performed on 6 February 1749.) Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. _The Rambler_ (English twice-weekly journal 1750—1752), No. 155 [10 September 1751] It requires but little acquaintance with the heart to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome; and that, consequently, the readiest method of obtaining her kindness is to praise her beauty. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Notable Thoughts about Women_ p. 95 [1882]. Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, then, especially being free from flatterers. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Attributed in Tryon Edwards _A Dictionary of Thoughts_, p. 6 [1891]. Men are like stone jugs, — you may lug them where you like by the ears. --Samuel Johnson (1709—1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Quoted in Louis Klopsch _Many Thoughts of Many Minds_ p. 94 [1896]. - - Flattery is counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no circulation. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. _Maxims_, 158 [1665] When our vices quit us, we flatter ourselves with the belief that it is we who quit them. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678] If we would not flatter ourselves, the flattery of others could not harm us. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_ p. 177 [15th ed. 1894]. - Knavery and flattery are blood relations. --Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865) American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865]. Attributed in "Education", vol IX [February 1889]. A man sufficiently gifted with humor is in small danger of succumbing to flattering delusions about himself, because he cannot help perceiving what a pompous ass he would become if he did. --Konrad Lorenz (1903—1989) Austrian zoologist. _On Aggression_ [1963] There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect. --Niccolò Machiavelli (1469—1527) Florentine statesman and political philosopher. _The Prince_, ch. 23 [written 1513] A little flattery will support a man through great fatigue. --James Monroe (1758—1831) Fifth President of the United States [1817—1825]. Quoted by Abigail Adams in a letter to Judge F.A. Vanderkemp [24 January 1818]. You can flatter any man by telling him he's the kind of man who can't be flattered. --Laurence J. Peter (1919—1990) Canadian teacher and author. _Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time_ [1983 ed.] (See Colton & Shakespeare.) Whoever has flattered his friend successfully must at once think himself a knave, and his friend a fool. --Alexander Pope (1688—1744) English poet. _Thoughts on Various Subjects_ [1727] (published with Jonathan Swift.) A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one. --Samuel Richardson (1689—1761) English novelist. _A Collection of the Moral and Instructive Sentiments..._ [1755] Take care how you listen to the voice of the flatterer, who, in return for his little stock, expects to derive from you considerable advantage. If one day you do not comply with his wishes, be imputes to you two hundred defects instead of perfections. --Sa'di [Muslih-uddin] (c. 1213—1292) Iranian poet. _The Gulistan, or Rose Garden_ [A.D. 1258] - DECIUS. Never fear that. If he be so resolved, I can o'ersway him, for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betray'd with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers; But when I tell him he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _Julius Caesar_, II, i [1599] CASSIUS: You love me not. BRUTUS: I do not like your faults. CASSIUS: A friendly eye could never see such faults. BRUTUS: A flatterer's would not, though they do appear As huge as high Olympus. --William Shakespeare (1564—1616) English dramatist. _Julius Caesar_, IV, iii [1599] - What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering. --George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _John Bull's Other Island_, Act IV [1904] Nothing has so much contributed to the debasement of human relationships as the idea that friends are won by flattery. --Fulton John Sheen (1895—1979) Roman Catholic bishop; the first popular preacher to appear on television. _Three to Get Married_ [1951] Though flattery blossoms like friendship, yet there is a great difference in the fruit. --Socrates (470?—399 B.C.) Greek philosopher. Attributed in Maturin M. Ballou _Notable Thoughts about Women_ p. 10 [1882]. Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools. --Sir Richard Steele (1672—1729) Irish-born essayist and dramatist. _The Guardian_ #24 [8 April 1713] Flattery is all right if you don't inhale. --Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965) American Democratic politician. After being introduced at the United Nations in February 1961. 'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit. --Jonathan Swift (1667—1745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. _Cadenus and Vanessa_ [1713] People flatter us because they can depend on our Credulity. --Tacitus [or Publius Cornelius Tacitus or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus] (c.55—c.117), Roman orator, lawyer, senator, and historian. _The Annals_ XVI. 2. [109] We flatter those we scarcely know, We please the fleeting guest; And deal full many a thoughtless blow To those who love us best. --Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850—1919) American author and poet. "Life's Scars", in _Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly_ [October 1898]. Flattery makes friends and truth makes enemies. --Yiddish proverb - ----- blandish (verb) ['blæn-dish] To flatter, to cajole or seduce with kind and ostensibly affectionate words. Flattery may be sincere, as may be cajolery but blandishment is generally taken as insincere, beguiling flattery. "Wheedle" implies persistent flattery while cajolery implies flattery against the staunch resistance of the person being flattered. blarney (noun) ['blahr-nee] Empty words, double-talk, fabrication, nonsense. Etymology: An eponym from Blarney Village just outside the city of Cork, Ireland. The world famous Blarney Stone is perched high up in the battlements of Blarney Castle there. The stone was given to Cormac McCarthy by Robert the Bruce in 1314 in recognition of his support in the Battle of Bannockburn, depicted at the very end of Mel Gibson's 'Braveheart.' Legend would have it be half the Stone of Scone over which Scottish Kings were crowned. cajole [kuh-JOHL], transitive verb: To persuade with flattery, repeated appeals, or soothing words; to coax. curry (verb) ['kê-ree] To rub down or dress a horse with a currycomb (metal brush); to coax and cajole personal benefit with flattery. fulsome [FUL-sum], adjective: 1. Offensive to the taste or sensibilities. 2. Insincere or excessively lavish; especially, offensive from excess of praise. inveigle [in-VAY-guhl; -VEE-], transitive verb: 1. To persuade by ingenuity or flattery; to entice. 2. To obtain by ingenuity or flattery. kowtow (verb) ['kaw-taw] 1.To prostrate oneself or touch one's head to the ground in complete submission to someone else. 2. To servilely and obsequiously comply with the wishes and demands of someone or something. obsequious [ob-SEE-kwee-us], adjective: Servilely attentive; compliant to excess; fawning. Ex.: His wealth nevertheless turns the townspeople into groveling, obsequious sycophants. --Stephen Holden, "'The Best Man': When She Says 'I Do,' She Means 'Not You'," _New York Times_ [14 August 1998] sycophant [SIK-uh-fuhnt], noun: A person who seeks favor by flattering people of wealth or influence; a parasite; a toady. toady [TOH-dee], noun, verb: 1. A fawning flatterer; humble dependent. 2. To attempt to gain favor by fawning or being servile. treacle (noun) ['tree-kêl] (1) Syrup, especially from the first pressing of sugar cane but also the molasses left over after the sugar crystals are removed; (2) sugar-coating, cloying sentiment, sweetness of speech, especially insincere compliments. wheedle [HWEE-d'l; WEE-d'l], transitive verb: 1. To entice by soft words or flattery; to coax. 2. To gain or get by flattery or guile. Synonyms: blarney, cajole, coax, sweet-talk.  . . see: "DEFECTS" see: "FAULTS" see: "QUIRKS" Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known than their crimes; and if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill-bred or awkward, he will hate you more and longer than if you tell him plainly that you think him a rogue. --Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773) British writer and politician. Biographies and/or related books about: _Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son_ [1827], Letter CLXI [5 September 1748] We put our best foot forward, but it's the other one that needs the attention. --William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (1924—2006) American clergyman and peace activist. _Credo_ [2004], "Life In General" Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended. --François de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680) French classical author. Quoted in Craufurd Tait Ramage _Beautiful Thoughts From French And Italian Authors_ [1866]. Heaven have mercy on us all — Presbyterians and Pagans alike — for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending. --Herman Melville (1819—1891) American novelist and poet. _Moby Dick_ [1851] ch. 17, "The Ramadan" What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe. --Blaise Pascal (1623—1662) French mathematician, physicist, and moralist. _Pensees_ [1670], Number 434 It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others. --François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651—1715) French theologian and author. "The Faults of Others" It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning real names. --Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904—1991) Polish-American novelist who won the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature. Interview with Richard Burgin in _The New York Times Magazine_ [26 November 1978]. [Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown) forgiving his fiancée's admission on being a man:] Well, nobody's perfect. --"Some Like It Hot" [1959] Screenplay by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.  FLIRTING . . see: "COURTSHIP" see: "MEN & WOMEN" see: "ROMANCE" see: "SEX" see: "LOVE & MARRIAGE (OR NOT)" for other related links A modern writer likens coquettes to those hunters who do not eat the game which they have successfully pursued. --Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835—1915) English novelist. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Notable Thoughts About Women_, p. 5 [1882]. ^ Dyson, Sir Cyril (1895-?) British jeweler. Presenting the graduation prizes at a girls' school, Dyson found it difficult to think of something different to say to each girl. As an attractive seventeen-year-old approached him across the platform, he could come up with nothing more original than, 'And what are you going to do when you leave school?' With a coy flutter of her eyelids, the girl replied, 'Well, I *had* thought of going straight home.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ [Of a coquette:] Its life is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any judgment of them is, that they are never what they seem. --Henry Fielding (1707—1754) English novelist and dramatist. _The Adventures of Joseph Andrews_, bk. III, ch. III [1742] God created the coquette as soon as He had made the fool. --Victor Hugo (1802—1885) French poet, dramatist, and novelist. Attributed in J. De Finod (collected and translated) _A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness_, p. 59 [1880]. Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses. --Dorothy Parker (1893—1967) American critic and humorist. "News Item" in _Enough Rope_ [1927]. Flirting is the act of making a man feel pleased with himself. --attributed to Helen Rowland (1875—1950) American writer. [Lady Lou, played by Mae West, speaking:] Why don't you come up sometime and see me? --Mae West (1893—1980) American stage and film actress. "She Done Him Wrong" [1933 film] ----- coquetry [KOH-ki-tree; koh-KE-tree], noun: Dalliance; flirtation. dalliance [DAL-ee-uhns, DAL-yuhns], noun: 1. Frivolous spending of time; dawdling. 2. Playful flirtation. ;void(0)) FLORIDA . . see: "PLACES" for related links [Of the Orlando area:] Just because we've ruined ninety percent of everything doesn't mean we can't do wonderful things with the remaining ten percent! --Linda Chapin Former Orange County commissioner, quoted in "The Theme-Parking, Megachurching, Franchising, Exurbing, McMansioning of America" by T.D. Allman in _National Geographic_ [March 2007]. The evolution of a tourist into a permanent resident consists of a struggle to harmonize misconceptions and preconceptions of Florida with reality. An initial diversion is to mail northward snapshots of himself reclining under a coconut palm or a beach umbrella, with the hope that they will be delivered in the midst of a blizzard. At the same time, the tourist checks weather reports from the North, and if his home community is having a mild winter he feels that his Florida trip has been in part a swindle. Nothing short of ten-foot snowdrifts and burst water- pipes at home can make his stay in the southland happy and complete. --Federal Writers' Project _Florida, A Guide to the Southernmost State_ [1939] I am stopping for two or three days at the 'oldest city in America' — two or three being none too much to sit in wonderment at the success with which it has outlived its age. --Henry James (1843—1916) American novelist. Letter to Edmund Gosse [18 February 1905]. [In Key West] there are more than one hundred saloons on an island one mile wide. If you get drunk and fall down in any direction on Duval Street, somebody said, you fall into another bar. --Charles Kuralt (1934—1997) American journalist and broadcaster. _Charles Kuralt's America_ [1995] "February, Key West" - "Land in 1920s Florida Was So Hot, People Sold Underwater Lots" By Cynthia Crossen in _The Wall Street Journal_ [3 August 2005] Gertrude Shelby asked her readers a question in a 1926 issue of Harper's magazine: "Did you ever keep chickens?" Ms. Shelby, a journalist, was using a metaphor to explain the rapid inflation of property prices in Florida. "Put down a pan full of big scraps, and the hens come running. The first ones grab big pieces and depart rapidly. ... The others see the pieces in the beaks, and instead of realizing there's plenty more in the pan, they chase the hens who got the first pieces. That's resale psychology." In less than a decade, that psychology transformed Florida from an overgrown bog to the epicenter of get-rich-quick schemes. Debarking from a train in Miami in 1925, an English tourist remarked on the city's "tropical bedlam," where sales agents pounced on visitors with noisy promises of "unsurpassed fortune." "One had been prepared for real-estate madness," the Englishman wrote. "And here it was, in excelsis." The Florida boom of the 1920s was far from America's first land rush, but it was certainly one of its most colorful, thanks to visionaries and hucksters like George Merrick, Carl Fisher and D.P. Davis. When Mr. Davis's first two island developments near Tampa went on the market in October 1924, people lined up for 40 hours before the sale began. One man chained himself to the door so he wouldn't lose his place. Not only did the entire 875 acres, much of it still underwater, sell out for $18 million, but an additional $8.2 million was returned to eager buyers whose money had arrived too late. With World War I over, and Calvin Coolidge, the preacher of prosperity, in the White House, ordinary working Americans in 1924 were feeling optimistic and flush. Cars were beginning to become more affordable, and highways were reaching regions largely inaccessible until then. And Florida, like Southern California, had something people from the North and Midwest were willing to pay for: balmy winter weather. A few foresighted developers already had started converting Florida's climate into cash. But first they had to clear the dense vegetation; drain, dredge, blast and fill; pour concrete; pump sand onto the waterfront; and import flamingos and date palms. They changed the name of Bull Island to Belle Island; Mosquito Inlet was renamed Ponce de Leon Inlet. George Merrick dreamed up a model city called Coral Gables, "wherein nothing would be unlovely." Carl Fisher took one look at a mangrove stand and imagined Miami Beach. With the extension of the rail line to Miami, some pockets of Florida began to serve as winter playgrounds for the very wealthy. World War I briefly interrupted the state's budding development, but soon after it ended, stories of the "American Riviera" and its skyrocketing property values began drifting north, assisted by a determined campaign of boosterism. "The only man that doesn't make money in Florida real estate is the man that doesn't own any," one slogan went. George Merrick hired William Jennings Bryan, former presidential candidate, to exhort the virtues of buying Coral Gables property twice a day to visitors. "Miami is the only city in the world," Mr. Bryan said, "where you can tell a lie at breakfast that will come true by evening." [ . . . ] The first generation of Florida buyers, like early converts to many speculative frenzies, did very well. A piece of land in Palm Beach that sold for $84,000 in 1915 was assessed 10 years later at almost $5 million. But as the prices inflated, so did the promises. A subdivision called Manhattan Estates was promoted as "not more than three-fourths of a mile from the prosperous and fast-growing city of Nettie." Nettie did not yet exist. People bought lots sight unseen — a blueprint stamped "Sold" was more valuable than dollars. In the summer of 1925, people began putting "Not For Sale" signs in front of properties they intended to keep. Before long, however, Florida began to choke on its own growth. In 1925, more than 2,000 freight cars were waiting to be unloaded in Miami. In August, the single railroad operating to Florida announced it could accept no more freight except fuel, livestock and perishables. Stocks of building materials soon ran out. Then, "two hurricanes showed what a soothing tropic wind could do when it got a running start from the West Indies," as Frederick Lewis Allen put it in his history of the 1920s, "Only Yesterday." By 1927, those who still had money to gamble left Florida for a safer game: the stock market. ;void(0)) FLOWERS . . see: "COUNTRY LIFE" see: "GARDENS" see: "SPRING" see: "NATURE" for other related links - Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. --Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887) American Congregational minister; [brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.] _Star Papers, or, Experiences of Art and Nature_ [1855] Flowers are the sweetest things that God ever made and forgot to put a soul into. --Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887) American Congregational minister; brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher. In Tryon Edwards _A Dictionary of Thoughts_, p. 178 [1908]. - To cultivate a garden is to walk with God, to go hand in hand with Nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere. --Christian Nestell Bovee (1820—1904) American writer. _Intuitions and Summaries of Thought_ [1862] The flowers that bloom in the spring, Tra la, Have nothing to do with the case. --W. S. Gilbert (1836—1911) English writer of comic and satirical verse. _The Mikado_, act 2 [1885] ^ Walter Savage Landor (1775—1864) British poet, essayist, and critic. Landor's cook displeased his master one day by serving an indifferent meal. Landor in a passion threw him through an open window. The cook landed awkwardly in the flower bed below and broke a limb. Landor cried out, 'Good God, I forgot the violets!' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ One can get as much exultation in losing oneself in a little thing as a big thing. It is nice to think how one can be recklessly lost in a daisy! --Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906—2001) American writer and wife of Charles Lindbergh. _Bring Me a Unicorn_ [1971] A weed is no more than a flower in disguise. --James Russell Lowell (1819—1891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. _A Fable for Critics_ [1848] Flowers are for wrapping in cellophane to present as a bouquet; Flowers are for prize arrangements in vases and silver tea-pots; Flowers are for plaiting into funeral wreaths. You can keep your flowers. Give me weeds. --Norman Nicholson (1914—1987) British poet and writer. "Weeds" [1981] Flowers belong to Fairyland; the flowers and the birds and the butterflies are all that the world has kept of its golden age; the only perfectly beautiful things on earth, joyous, innocent, half divine, useless, say they who are wiser than God. --Ouida [Maria Louise de la Ramée] (1839—1908) English novelist. _Two Little Wooden Shoes_ [1874] There were flowers all over the place. Gangsters have this thing about flowers. They think whoever sends the biggest arrangement cares the most. --Calogero Anello (Lillo Brancato) In the film _A Bronx Tale_ [1993], screenplay by Chazz Palminteri, directed by Robert De Niro. From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be 'Beware of men bearing flowers.' --Muriel Spark (1918—2006) British novelist. _Curriculum Vitae_ [1992] Roses red and violets blue, And all the sweetest flowers, that in the forest grew. --Edmund Spenser (1552/53—1599) English poet. _The Faerie Queen_, bk. III, canto 6, st. 6 [1590—1596] Sweet April showers Do spring May flowers. --Thomas Tusser (c.1524—1580) English agricultural writer and poet. _A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry_ [1557] "April's Husbandry" - I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD [1804] --William Wordsworth (1770—1850) English poet. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. - A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars. ---- jardiniere (noun) [zhar-dn-'eer or jar-dn-'eer] (1) A decorative container for plants or flowers; (2) A stand or box for plants or flowers, such as a window box; (3) Diced fresh vegetables served as an accompaniment to meat, as a jardiniere soup. nosegay [NOHZ-gay], noun: A bunch of odorous and showy flowers; a bouquet; a posy. . . see: "MUSIC" for related links Greek orator and satirist Lucian described an ill-fated debut: 'Harmonides, a young flute player and scholar of Timotheus, at his first public performance began his solo with so violent a blast that he breathed his last breath into his flute, and died upon the spot.' --in Charles Burney _A General History of Music_ [4 vols., pub. 1776-89]. [On flute music:] Specific for the bite of a viper. --Aulus Gellius (130—180) Latin author and grammarian. Gellius cites Theophrastus & Democritus for this belief. Quoted in Charles Burney _A General History of Music: From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period_, vol I [4 vols., 1776-89]. Please bring my flute. --Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792—1822) English poet. Letter to his wife, informing her he had eloped with Mary Goodwin and asking her to join them. The sound of the flute will cure epilepsy, and a sciatic gout. --Theophrastus (c.370—c.287 BC) Greek philosopher of the Peripatetic school. Attributed in Nat Shapiro _An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music_ [1981]. -- Scientists have discovered the oldest playable musical instrument in the world. It’s a flute carved from a bird’s wing bone more than 9,000 years ago. The flute was discovered with other flutes at an ancient burial site in China. ;void(0)) FLYING . . see: "AIRPLANES" see: "TRAVEL" for other related links see: "ENTERTAINMENT, HOBBIES, & LEISURE ACTIVITIES" for other related links The child [Nikola Tesla] . . . perched on the roof of the barn, clutching the family umbrella and hyperventilating on the fresh mountain breeze until his body felt light and the dizziness in his head convinced him he could fly. Plunging to earth, he lay unconscious and was carried off to bed by his mother. --Margaret Cheney (b. 1921) American journalist and author. _Tesla: Man Out of Time_ [1981] "A Gambling Man" - It was just after 10:30 in the morning on December 17, 1903, when Orville Wright, an Ohio inventor and bicycle shop owner, took off into a near-freezing head wind for a I2-second propeller- driven trip, a I20-foot voyage that may well have launched the modern age. "Aviation is the definitive technology of the 20th century," says Tom Crouch, senior curator of aeronautics at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) and author of _Wings: A History of Aviation, from Kites to the Space Age_. "Flight symbolized our deepest aspirations, like freedom and control of our destiny." Amid all the celebrations of the long-anticipated centennial, it might be easy to lose sight of just how amazing those landmark early flights were. As Dunlop discovered, Wright aircraft were dangerous. Frail assemblies of wire, wood and cloth powered by homemade engines, they were reluctant birds, difficult to steer and easy to crash. In fact, planes based on the Flyer that Orville Wright coaxed off the ground would kill dozens of pilots in coming years. Still, the craft embodied what we recognize today as the basics of flight, and though aviation has advanced far beyond anything the brothers might have first imagined - in 2000, airplanes carried more than three billion passengers [ . . . ] From the ancient Greeks, whose mythological tale of Icarus' wax wings melting when he soared too close to the sun, to carvings left by the South American Incan civilization on the walls of its holy Andean citadel of Machu Picchu, humanity has long been fascinated by the idea of flying. Renaissance paintings and frescoes of Christ's ascension into heaven "had a concept of air as a thing to be worked," says Richard Hallion, a former NASM curator and Air Force historian, and author of _Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War. "Christ is shown lifting off like a rocket, and the Apostles all have windblown garments. Angels have muscular wings in proportion to their size." Among the most startling early visions of powered human flight are Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century sketches of mechanical flapping wings and crude helicopters. Yet Leonardo's ideas never got off the page. The first person to apply scientific principles to the problems of flight was George Cayley, an English baronet known today as the father of aerial navigation. Born in 1773, he built the first glider to go aloft with a person aboard — his coachman, in I853 — and correctly identified lift, drag and thrust as the main forces to be mastered for powered flight. [ . . . ] The first hot-air balloon with passengers took to the air in 1783, when its inventors, the Montgolfier brothers, sent a sheep, a rooster and a duck soaring for eight minutes in the sky over Versailles. For the next century, lighter-than-air balloons and airships, unwieldy or impossible to control, were considered the only realistic way to get aloft. Meanwhile, inventors kept struggling with the challenge of powered, heavier-than-air flight. Some built gliders shaped like moths or bats; others built massive, steam- powered aircraft that were unflyable; one such contraption collapsed under its own weight. [. . . ] Some pioneers were on the right track. The German Otto Lilienthal built 16 different gliders between 1891 and 1896, making almost 2,000 flights in the low hills outside Berlin. In his experiments, he accumulated data on lift and would inspire the Wright brothers, but his death in 1896 in one of his own gliders had a dampening effect on aviation. Convinced that powered flight was a dangerous folly, many Europeans working on the problem aborted their efforts. [ . . . ] At first, the airplane's potential beggared the imaginations of the most progressive scientists. Too expensive for anyone but rich daredevils and too dangerous for regular commercial use, the Wrights' machine was laughed off as frivolous; even the brothers thought that only national governments would have the resources to build and fly airplanes. "It is doubtful if aeroplanes will ever cross the ocean," the eminent Harvard astronomer William Pickering scoffed in 1908, according to Hallion's history. "The public has greatly overestimated the possibilities of the aeroplane, imagining that in another generation they will be able to fly over to London in a day. This is manifestly impossible." Such disdain chilled U.S. investment in aviation. Between 1908 and 1913, the U.S. government spent only $435,000 on aviation — less than Germany, France, Chile and even Bulgaria. European inventors and entrepreneurs were soon building better, faster and more stable planes than were the Wrights. "The Wright airplane was superseded by European designs as early as 1910," [ . . . ] German, Russian and especially French aviators and inventors soon dominated the skies, as our vocabulary attests; "aviation," "aileron," "fuselage" and "helicopter" all have French origins. [ . . . ] At the start of World War I, the airplane had come into its own as a military and commercial technology. The open-cockpit, largely wood-and-fabric airplanes jousting in Europe's skies — planes like the British Sopwith Camel and the German Albatros — were faster and far more nimble than the Wright Flyer, but still dangerous. Heroes like Manfred von Richthofen (the "Red Baron") and America's Eddie Rickenbacker created the mystique of the fighter ace, but thousands of others perished in the air. In 1917, the life expectancy of a British fighter pilot in a combat zone [. . . ] was three weeks. [ . . . ] In the 1920s and '30s, investment by industry and government fueled innovation. Wood frames and cloth skins gave way to all- metal designs, which in turn made possible larger, stronger craft, streamlining, sealed cabins and high-altitude flight. Also important were reliable flight instruments such as the artificial horizon, altimeter and directional gyroscope, crucial to flying in poor weather (and keeping airlines on schedule). By 1932, U.S. airlines were flying more than 475,000 passengers a year. In 1935, aviation reached a new peak — and, oddly perhaps, something of a plateau — with the development of the Douglas Aircraft Company's DC-3. With 21 seats, all-metal construction, a streamlined design, retractable landing gear, automatic pilot and a cruising speed of almost 200 miles per hour, the DC-3 is considered by many experts the pinnacle of the propeller-driven plane, and set the pattern for planes we know today. As new engine designs drove propellers faster and faster — at their tips, they broke the sound barrier — engineers came up against baffling aerodynamic properties. Shock waves and unpredicted turbulence undermined performance. Propellers lost efficiency and thrust when they neared supersonic speeds. The man who overcame that limit was not a professional engineer. Frank Whittle, a machinist's son and Royal Air Force pilot, came up with the idea for a jet engine while serving as a flight instructor in the early 1930s. "Whittle was an odd duck pushing an idea everyone thought was kind of nuts," says historian Roger Bilstein, author of _Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts_. "Nobody thought it would work." Whittle persisted, eventually scraping together the resources to design a workable jet engine on his own. The concept, at any rate, is simple: air coming in at the front of the engine is compressed and combined with fuel, then ignited; the burning mixture roars out the back of the jet, generating tremendous thrust while passing through turbines that power the compressors in the front of the engine. Whittle's jet engine was first tested in the lab in 1937 and, four years later, powered a specially designed fighter at an air base near Gloucester, England. Pilots watching the top-secret test flight from the side of the damp airfield were baffled. "My God, chaps, I must be going round the bend," one officer reportedly said later. "It hadn't got a propeller!" Meanwhile, a German engineer named Hans von Ohain had been developing his own jet engine. In 1944, a handful of jet fighters and bombers, including the Messerschmitt Me 262 — the world's first operational jet — saw service in the Luftwaffe. In America, military brass put jets on a back burner, convinced the war would be won with conventional airplanes, and lots of them. Diverting resources to work on the unproven jet, authorities insisted, would be a waste of time. But after the Allies swept through Germany at the end of the war, they recruited dozens of German jet and rocket scientists, including Wernher von Braun, and then took them to the United States in "Operation Paperclip." The plan laid the groundwork for decades of U.S.-led innovation, from immediately useful jet technology to advances in rocketry that would ultimately make the space program possible. Jet propulsion technology was the most important thing in aviation since the Wrights. "The jet wasn't a refinement of anything, it was a complete breakthrough," says NASM's Anderson. "A whole second era of aviation was opened up by Whittle and von Ohain." Yet the jet's inventors never got the recognition the Wrights enjoyed. Whittle's patents were appropriated by the British government during the war, and von Ohain quietly began a new career in I947 — as a U.S. Air Force propulsion scientist. Yet it would take years of painstaking work to turn the jet plane into reliable transportation. In the early days, fighter jet pilots had a one in four chance of dying in an airplane accident. Supersonic speeds, at least about 650 mph, required rethinking conventional notions about aerodynamics, control and efficiency. The design of the X-I, which broke the sound barrier over California's Muroc Dry Lake in 1947, was based on the .50-caliber bullet, an object that engineers knew went supersonic. It was flown by laconic West Virginian test pilot Chuck Yeager, a veteran World War II ace who counted two Messerschmitt 262s among his kills. The bravery of those test pilots is what we tend to remember of jet travel's early days. But perhaps more important was the massive government expenditure on aviation and space research in the 1950s and '60s. By 1959, the aviation industry was one of the largest employers in America's manufacturing sector, with more than 80 percent of its sales in the decade and a half after World War II to the military. America's aviation and space successes became potent symbols in the cold war, and the booming aerospace industry got what amounted to a blank check from the government. After all, as a character in the movie version of The Right Stuff observed, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." "Government investment in things related to flight drove a whole broad front of technological development," Crouch says. "One thing after another developed because it was somehow related to flight, and governments were spending money on it." Computers became ubiquitous aviation tools, from aiding design of complex aircraft to forming global ticketing networks. The jet engine also took civil aviation to new heights — and speeds. Boeing introduced a prototype of the 707 passenger jet in 1954 that could fly more than 600 mph (three times faster than the DC-3). Four years later, Pan American began regular 707 service from New York to Paris, ushering in the jet age. As the hard-won lessons of military test pilots yielded safer, more stable jet designs, the very shape of the world began to change. From massive B-52 nuclear bombers capable of flying nonstop from Omaha to Moscow in 11 hours, to passenger jets that could cross the Atlantic in 7 hours, the jet made international travel accessible to almost everyone. Big passenger jets became common — the 452-passenger Boeing 747 debuted in 1969 — and the number of people who flew climbed steadily each year. Supersonic passenger planes were the next obvious frontier. But with the exceptions of the Soviet Tupolev TU-144, which first flew in December 1968, and the Concorde, a joint venture between France and Britain that took off two months later, supersonic passenger travel would remain largely a novelty. Both planes were a bust financially. In almost 30 years flying across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound, the gas-guzzling Concorde never broke even. Air France ceased regularly scheduled Concorde service this past May and British Airways in October. Nonetheless, entrepreneurs and politicians have continued to float futuristic (and so far impractical) ideas, like the Orient Express, a massive supersonic transport that would carry up to 200 passengers from New York to Beijing in two hours, skipping like a stone across the earth's atmosphere at Mach 5. Attaining ever-higher speeds hasn't necessarily been the highest priority for the military. Since the I970s, military planners have emphasized maneuverability and stealth. But the new planes, with smaller, angled wings and control surfaces, tended to be unstable. That changed with the development in the 1970s of onboard computers, or "fly- by-wire" systems, in aviation lingo, capable of making thousands of adjustments per second to rudders and other control surfaces. The Northrop B-2 stealth bomber and the Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter, bizarre matte-black bundles of strange angles and stubby wings designed to disappear from enemy radar, seem to defy the laws of aerodynamics with the help of sophisticated software. The ultimate fly-by-wire technology, unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are remote-controlled drones, which have already seen service in the skies over Afghanistan and Iraq. [ . . . ] --Andrew Curry "Taking Wing" in _Smithsonian_ [December 2003] - - My particular inner desire to fly the Atlantic alone was nothing new with me. I had flown Atlantics before. Every one has his own Atlantics to fly. Whatever you want very much to do, against the opposition of tradition, neighborhood opinion, and so-called 'common sense' — that is an Atlantic. ... I flew the Atlantic because I wanted to ... To want in one's heart to do a thing, for its own sake; to enjoy doing it; to concentrate all one's energies upon it — that is not only the surest guarantee of success. It is also being true to oneself. --Amelia Earhart (1897—1937) American aviator who disappeared in a flight over the Pacific Ocean. "American Magazine" [August 1932] - We have already begun to fly; several persons, here and there, have found the secret to fitting wings to themselves, of setting them in motion, so that they are held up in the air and are carried across streams . . . . the art of flying is only just being born; it will be perfected, and some day we will go as far as the Moon. --Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) French philosopher and author. _Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes Habités_ [1686] Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that 10,000 men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them? --Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. In a letter to Jan Ingenhousz [16 January 1784]. - I saw a fleet of fishing boats. . . .I flew down almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland. They just stared. Maybe they didn't hear me. Maybe I didn't hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool. --Charles Lindbergh (1902—1974) American aviator. In the _New York Times_ [23 May 1927]. Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: What more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust pipe. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind. I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted the wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary lifetime. --Charles Lindbergh (1902—1974) American aviator. _The Spirit of St. Louis_ [1953] "New York to Paris" - - High Flight by John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941) Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless falls of air; Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never lark, nor e'er eagle flew — And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high, untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God. - The visibility was good and the air was clear, and there is nothing like the air at such altitudes as that. All the trappings of the world are out and one is close to the infinite in such air. The throb of the motor has always seemed to me like the drumming in one's ears when one takes ether. A flight is a sort of oblivion. I am happier in a plane than I ever am on land, I suppose because I was born for it. I am capable in the air and more alive than I am on earth. When we die, I hope our souls go to the air out of the world, up above the cloudbanks where the sun streaks down on oceans of pink and gold. --John P. Marquand (1893—1960) American novelist. _Your Turn, Mr. Moto_ [1935] Darius was clearly of the opinion That the air is also man's dominion And that with paddle or fin or pinion, We soon or late shall navigate The azure as now we sail the sea. --J.T. [John Townsend] Trowbridge (1827—1916) American novelist of books for boys, poet and editor, _Darius Green and his Flying Machine_ [1910] There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. --Orson Welles (1915—1985) American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. Interview in "The Times" [6 May 1985]. - Success. Four flights Thursday morning. All against twenty-one- mile wind. Started from level with engine power alone. Average speed through air thirty-one miles. Longest fifty-nine seconds. Inform press. Home Christmas. --Wilbur Wright (1867—1912) & Orville Wright (1871—1948), Telegram to the Reverend Milton Wright, from Kitty Hawk, N.C. [17 December 1903]. - On April 25, 1974, the "Toronto Star" reported the deaths of Mr. Todd Missfield and Ms. Bonnie Johnson who died when their Cessna 150 airplane crashed into a billboard. The message on the billboard read: "Learn to Fly." - 28: Percentage of adults who, if they could have a single superpower, say they would most like to be able to read minds, according to a survey for Activision 15: Percentage who say they would like to be able to fly 11: Percentage who say they would like to be able to be invisible 9: Percentage who say they would like to be able to have super strength --blurb in _Las Vegas Business Press_ [28 August 2006] ----- barotrauma (noun) Pain and possible damage caused to an organ by changes in atmospheric pressure.  FOG . . see: "NATURE" for related links The fog comes on little cat feet, It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. --Carl Sandburg (1878—1967) American poet. "Fog" [1916] ;void(0)) FOLLOWERS . . Photograph: Belmont Lake State Park, Long Island, NY, Summer '09 see: "CROWD (THE)" see: "SHEEP" see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links Most people are followers, not leaders. In fact, the more rapid the methods of communication, the more numerous will be the imitators. --Fulton John Sheen (1895—1979) Roman Catholic bishop; the first popular preacher to appear on television. _Thoughts For Daily Living_ [1955] ----- cortege [kawr-TEZH], noun: 1. A procession, especially a ceremonial one. 2. A line or train of attendants; retinue. lackey (noun) A servile follower. Synonyms: toady, crawler, sycophant myrmidon [MUR-muh-don]; noun: A loyal follower, especially one who executes orders without question, protest, or pity. Ety: Members of a warlike Thessalian people who followed Achilles on the expedition against Troy. sequacious (adj.) [see-'kwey-shês] (1) Inclined to follow rather than lead, conformist, following others in thought and behavior; (2) continuing in a consistent direction, as a line of reasoning. truckle [TRUHK-uhl], intransitive verb: To yield or bend obsequiously to the will of another; to act in a subservient manner. end page | FACE - FAME | FAILURE | FAMILIARITY - FANTASY | FARMING - FATHERS | FAULT/FAULTS - FEELINGS | FEMINISTS - FIFTIES (THE) | FIFTY - FLAG | FLATTERY - FOLLOWERS | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 1 (A-O) | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 2 (P-Z) | FOOLS / FOOLISH | FOOTBALL - FORESIGHT | FOREST - FRAUDS | FREE - FREEDOM OF THOUGHT | FREEDOM | FREUD - FRIENDS | FRUGAL - FUTURE | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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