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 . . . INVENTIONS see: "DISCOVERY" for related links Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. --L. [Lyman] Frank Baum (18561919) American writer. _The Lost Princess of Oz_ [1917] America is a country of inventors; and the greatest of the inventors are the newspaper men. --Alexander Graham Bell (18471922) Scottish-born American audiologist best known as the inventor of the telephone [1876]. Speech to the Empire Club of Canada, Toronto [1 November 1917]. Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) - Frederic Tudor, the son of George Washington's Judge Advocate General, an upper-crust Bostonian, the very last type you would expect to become the first tycoon, the founding father of the art of salesmanship, or the inspirer of anything so democratic as an ice-cream parlor. He was born in 1784. His three brothers went to Harvard, but he wanted to be up and doing, so he quit school at thirteen. He became a merchant, and an inventor with so many mad ideas that didn't payoff that a whimsical brother wondered why he didn't break up the ice on the Boston ponds and ship it to the tropics. The youngest Tudor ignored the crack and seized on a brain wave. He shipped one hundred and thirty tons of ice to Martinique. It melted in six weeks. Insulation was the big problem, and with the fanaticism of Edison in pursuit of a filament, Tudor tried everything from straw to blankets and he beat it in the end with sawdust. To procure uniform blocks of ice, he got a friend to design an ice cutter with two parallel runners made of iron with saw teeth. They were pulled across the ponds by horses. Within fifteen years he had collared title to the New England ponds, got monopoly rights on building icehouses in Havana and New Orleans and Charleston and had his own fleet shipping ice in thousands of tons to the West Indies, Persia, India, and Europe. The foreigners were delighted with the product but slightly bemused about what to do with it. Tudor responded by anticipating two centuries of salesmanship and advertising. He realized that the golden rule of merchandizing is to create an appetite for something you didn't even know you wanted. He sailed around half the globe convincing dazed clients that iced drinks were the elixir of health, that a hospital without ice was ready for the plague, that a meal without ice cream was a cannibal's snack. Pretty soon malaria victims were dabbing ice on their foreheads, and fashionable houses in London, Cairo, and Casablanca were serving ice cream. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] In the thirty-five years between the end of the Civil War and the end of the century, the golden time of American inventiveness, the United States Patent Office granted more than half a million patents. Alexander Graham Bell produced the miracle of the telephone; George Eastman, the handy family camera, a marvel known in all languages as simply a Kodak. And there was the home sewing machine, and the typewriter (invented, oddly, fifty years before it caught on), and an immense improvement in dynamos and motors. And, capping this great age was the achievement of Orville and Wilbur Wright with the heavier-than-air flying machine. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. --Albert Einstein (18791955) German-American physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Quoted in "American Scientist" [1945]. The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it. --attributed to both Harry Emerson Fosdick & Elbert Hubbard. 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 (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. In a letter to Jan Ingenhousz [16 January 1784]. They all laughed at Christopher Columbus When he said the world was round They all laughed when Edison recorded sound They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother When they said that man could fly; They told Marconi Wireless was a phony It's the same old cry! --Ira Gershwin (18961983) American songwriter. "They All Laughed" [1937 song] - "Then there is electricity!" exclaimed Clifford. "Is that a humbug too? Is it a fact or have I dreamed it that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?" "If you mean the telegraph," said the old gentleman, glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the rail track, "it is an excellent thing. A great thing, indeed, sir; particularly as regards the detection of bank robbers and murderers." --Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864) American novelist and short-story writer. _The House of the Seven Gables_ [1851] - That's an amazing invention but who would ever want to use one of them? --Rutherford B. Hayes (18221893) 19th President of the U.S. [18771881]. Speaking to Alexander Graham Bell about the invention of the telephone; as quoted in Edward J. Lias _Future Mind_ [1982]. People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things. --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (17421799) German scientist and drama critic. In J. P. Stern's _Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions_, p. 309 [1959], "Further Excerpts from Lichtenberg's Notebooks". In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American Jew whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable those Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility.' --Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (18401916) American-born British inventor, In _The Times_ [11 July 1915]. (Taking the advice, Maxim invented the machine-gun.) - I cannot love the Brothers Wright, Marconi wins my mixed devotion. Had no one yet discovered flight Or set the air waves in commotion, Life would, I think, have been as well. That also goes for A. G. Bell. What I'm really thankful for, when I'm cleaning up after lunch, Is the invention of waxed paper. That Edison improved my lot, I sometimes doubt; nor care a jitney Whether the kettle steamed, or Watt, Or if the gin invented Whitney. Better the world, I often feel, Had nobody contrived the wheel. On the other hand, I'm awfully indebted To whoever it was dreamed up the elastic band. Yes, pausing grateful, now and then, Upon my prim, domestic courses, I offer praise to lesser men Fultons unsung, anonymous Morses Whose deft and innocent devices Pleasure my house with sweets and spices. I give you, for instance, the fellow Who first had the idea for Scotch Tape. I hail the man who thought of soap, The chap responsible for zippers, Sun lotion, the stamped envelope, And screens, and wading pools for nippers, Venetian blinds of various classes, And bobby pins and tinted glasses. DeForest never thought up anything So useful as a bobby pin. Those baubles are the ones that keep Their places, and beget no trouble, Incite no battles, stab no sleep, Reduce no villages to rubble, Being primarily designed By men of unambitious mind. You remember how Orville Wright said his flying machine Was going to outlaw war? Let them on Archimedes dote Who like to hear the planet rattling. I cannot cast a hearty vote For Galileo or for Gatling, Preferring, of the freaks of science, The pygmies rather than the giants (And from experience being wary of Greek geniuses bearing gifts), Deciding, on reflection calm, Mankind is better off with trifles: With Band-Aid rather than the bomb, With safety match than safety rifles. Let the earth fall or the earth spin! A brave new world might well begin With no invention Worth the mention Save paper towels and aspirin. Remind me to call the repairman About my big, new, automatically defrosting refrigerator with the built-in electric eye. --Phyllis McGinley (19051978) American poet and author. "Reactionary Essay on Applied Science", in the _New Yorker_ [15 September 1951]. - By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed. --Lewis Mumford (18951990) American architectural critic, urban planner, and historian. _The Conduct of Life_ [1951], "The Challenge of Renewal" If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. --Sir Isaac Newton (16421727) English mathematician and physicist. Letter to Robert Hooke [5 February 1676]. ... and yet the true creator is necessity, which is the mother of invention. --Plato (427?347 B.C.) Greek philosopher. _The Republic_ - He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers. --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. _Gulliver's Travels_, pt. III, ch. V [1726] Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age. --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. Attributed in Tryon Edwards _A Dictionary of Thoughts_, p. 269 [1908 ed.]. - Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. --Albert von Szent-Gyφrgyi (18931992) Hungarian-born biochemist who won the 1937 Nobel prize for Medicine. Quoted in Irving Good (ed.) _The Scientist Speculates_ [1962]. - It is said to have been reported to one of the Roman emperors, as a piece of good news, that one of his subjects had invented a process for manufacturing unbreakable glass. The emperor gave orders that the inventor should be put to death and the records of his invention should be destroyed. If the invention had been put on the market, the manufacturers of ordinary glass would have been put out of business; there would have been unemployment that would have caused political unrest, and perhaps revolution. --Arnold Toynbee (18891975) English historian. _Change And Habit: The Challenge Of Our Time_, ch. 7 [1966] - If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. --Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (16941778) French writer and philosopher. _Epξtres_, no. 96 [1770] 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 (18671912) and Orville Wright (18711948) Designers of the first airplane. (Telegram to the Reverend Milton Wright, from Kitty Hawk, N.C. [17 December 1903].) - Press Release Austin, Texas Dr. Calvin Rickson, a scientist from Texas A&M University has invented a bra that keeps women's breasts from jiggling and prevents the nipples from pushing through the fabric when cold weather sets in. At a news conference announcing the invention, a large group of men took Dr. Rickson outside and kicked the shit out of him. - ----- neoteric [ee-uh-TER-ik], adjective: Recent in origin; modern; new.  . . see: "MONEY" for related links Never mind how I got it. Bank it. --Tallulah Bankhead in 1933, when FDR called in the gold and she showed up at the bank with a large stack of gold coins, and the teller raised his eyebrows and said, "Why, Miss Bankhead, you've been hoarding." If you think education is expensive try ignorance. --Derek C. Bok (b. 1930) American lawyer and educator. Quoted in Paul Dickson _The Official Rules_ [1978]. - It is the part of a wise man to keep himself to-day for to-morrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket. --Miguel de Cervantes (15471616) Spanish novelist. _Don Quixote de la Mancha_, pt. 1, bk. III, ch. 9 [1605] & see: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. --Samuel Palmer (d. 1724) _Moral Essays on Some of the Most Curious and Significant English, Scotch and Foreign Proverbs_ [1710] & note: 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is all wrong. I tell you, 'put all your eggs in one basket,' and then watch that basket. --Andrew Carnegie (18351919) American businessman and philanthropist of Scottish birth. Address at Curry Community College, Pittsburgh, Pa. [23 June 1885]. - An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. Attributed in "Manford's New Monthly Magazine" [January 1887]. Foul cankring rust the hidden treasure frets, But gold thats put to use more gold begets. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Venus and Adonis_ [15921593]  IOWA . . see: "PLACES" for related links Iowa, a really fecund state, throws its corn over into Nebraska and Illinois, and its old folks all the way to California. --John Gunther (19011970) American author. _Inside U.S.A._ [1947] Des Moines has the largest per capita ice cream consumption in America. The second largest gold-fish farm in the world is located withint seventy miles of Des Moines. The best pair of overalls made on the American Continent came from Iowa. There is no group of two and a half million people in the world who worship God as Iowans do. --unnamed Iowa State College professor, in H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) _Americana_ [1925] ;void(0)) IRISH (THE) & IRELAND . . see: "PLACES" for related links see: "PEOPLE" for related links The Irish Leprechaun is the Faeries' shoemaker and is known under various names in different parts of Ireland: Cluricaune in Cork, Lurican in Kerry, Lurikeen in Kildare and Lurigadaun in Tipperary. Although he works for the Faeries, the Leprechaun is not of the same species. He is small, has dark skin and wears strange clothes. His nature has something of the manic-depressive about it: first he is quite happy, whistling merrily as he nails a sole on to a shoe; a few minutes later, he is sullen and morose, drunk on his home-made heather ale. The Leprechaun's two great loves are tobacco and whiskey, and he is a first-rate con- man, impossible to out-fox. No one, no matter how clever, has ever managed to cheat him out of his hidden pot of gold or his magic shilling. At the last minute he always thinks of some way to divert his captor's attention and vanishes in the twinkling of an eye. --Nancy Arrowsmith & George Moorse _A Field Guide to the Little People_ [1977] - Ireland is far more favored than Britain by latitude, and by its mild and healthy climate ... There are no reptiles, and no snake can exist there; for although often brought over from Britain, as soon as the ship nears land, they breathe the scent of its air, and die. The island abounds in milk and honey. --Bede the Venerable (672735) Anglo-Saxon theologian and historian. _Ecclesiastical History of the English People_ [731-32] - It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everyone. --Brendan Behan (19231964) Irish poet, novelist, and playwright. Quoted in E.H. Mikhail (ed.) _Brendan Behan, Interviews and Recollections_ [1982]. I was made to feel ashamed of being Irish so I buried my Irishness and I buried my accent. ... I had to create an identity for myself and I took on the role of a young Cockney lad. --Pierce Brosnan (b. 1953) Irish-American actor. Interview in the _Mirror_ (UK) [May 1997]. We are told that if Irishmen go by the thousand to die, not for Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand on the deserts of Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of Gallipoli, they are winning self-government for Ireland. But if they dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to dream even that freedom can be won, then they are traitors to their country. --Sir Roger Casement (18641916) British public servant who was executed for treason and became an Irish martyr. In Brian Inglis _Roger Casement_ [1973]. [Of the Irish:] This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever. --attributed to Sigmund Freud (18561939) Austrian psychiatrist. To begin with Ireland, the most western part of the continent, the natives are peculiarly remarkable for the gaiety and levity of their disposition; the English, transplanted there, in time lose their melancholy serious air, and become gay and thoughtless, more fond of pleasure, and less addicted to reasoning. --Oliver Goldsmith (17281774) Anglo-Irish writer, poet, and dramatist. In Arthur Friedman (ed.) _The Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith_, 5 vol. [1966]. Every Irishman has a potatoe in his head. --Augustus William Hare (17921834) English biographer and compiler of travel books. _Guesses at Truth_ [1827] (Co-written with brother Julius) The Irish are a fair people they never speak well of one another. --Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791]. For God's sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country. --Reginald Maudling, Conservative home secretary, after a visit to Northern Ireland [1 July 1970]; in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 930 [2004]. Cohan & Major explain: Britain had sent troops into the province on 14 Aug. 1969 after the outbreak of serious clashes between the Protestant and Catholic communities. The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad. --attributed to George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. The moment the very name of Ireland is mentioned, the English seem to bid adieu to common feeling, common prudence, and common sense, and to act with the barbarity of tyrants, and the fatuity of idiots. --Sydney Smith (17711845) English clergyman and essayist. _Letters of Peter Plymley_, letter 2 [1807] I'm very proud of my Irish side also ... I went there when I broke up with my girlfriend. And it was the wrong place to go. All you can do is drink Guinness and cry and look at the ocean and want to kill yourself. --Ben Stiller (b. 1965) American comedian, actor, and film director. Interview in "Time" (mag.) [19 October 1998]. The Irish are difficult to deal with. For one thing the English do not understand their innate love of fighting and blows. --Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892) English poet. Quoted in Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir [1897]. Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whisky polishes the copper and is the saving of him. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. _Life on the Mississippi_, ch. 23 [1883] Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy. --William Butler Yeats (18651939) Irish poet and dramatist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Quoted in _The New York Times Biographical Service_, vol. 26, p. 1417 [1995]. - Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbor. It makes you shoot at your landlord and it makes you miss him. --Irish proverb . . see: "TOASTS" see: "ALCOHOL" for other related links see: "FRIENDS / FRIENDSHIP" for related links see: "FOOD & DRINK" for related links May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far. May there always be work for your hands to do, May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine warm on your windowpane, May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near you, And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you. May you have warm words on a cold evening, A full moon on a dark night, And the road downhill all the way to your door. May your home always be too small to hold all of your friends. May your glass be ever full May the roof over your head be always strong, And may you be in heaven Half an hour before the devil knows you're dead. May the roof above us never fall in, And may friends gathered below never fall out. There are good ships and there are wood ships, And ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships, And may they always be. Here's to a fellow who smiles, When life runs along like a song, And here's to a lad who can smile, When everything goes dead wrong. Here's to temperance supper, With water in glasses tall, And coffee and tea to end with, And me not there at all. May those who love us, love us, And those who don't love us, May God turn their hearts, And if he doesn't turn their hearts, May he turn their ankles So we'll know them by their limping. May the grass grow long on the road to hell for want of use. Dance as if no one were watching, Sing as if no one were listening, And live every day as if it were your last. May the saddest day of your future be no worse Than the happiest day of your past. May you live to be a hundred years, With one extra year to repent. These things I warmly wish for you: Someone to love, some work to do, A bit o' sun, a bit o' cheer, And a guardian angel always near. May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the hollow of his hand. May the good Lord take a liking to you--- But not too soon.  IRONY . . see: "RIDICULE" see: "SARCASM", "SATIRE" see: "SNEER" see: "WIT" see: "LANGUAGE" for other related links At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of sword- play of the mind: you pink your adversary, aud he is forthwith dead: and then you deserve to be hung for it. --Christian Nestell Bovee (18201904) American writer. _Intuitions and Summaries of Thought_ [2 vols. 1862] Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear and shall not understand, and another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware, both of that 'more' and of the outsiders' incomprehension. --Henry W. Fowler (18581933) English schoolmaster and lexicographer. _A Dictionary of Modern English Usage_ [orig. pub. 1926; 1994 ed.] ^ Headline in the Narragansett (R.I.) Times. LITERARCY GRANT BENEFITS LOCAL STUDENTS --_New Yorker_ (magazine) [24 December 2007] ^ It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks. --attributed to Pierre Auguste Renoir (18411919) French painter. Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding. --Agnes Repplier (18551950) American author. _In Pursuit of Laughter_ [1936] A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. --Jassamyn West (19021984) American novelist and screenwriter. _To See the Dream_ [1957] Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment. --Edwin Percy Whipple (18191886) American essayist and critic. "Wit and Humor" Lecture to the Boston Mercantile Library Association [December 1845]. - 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." ----- ironic (adjective) [I-'rah-nik] (1) Pertaining to a surprising state of affairs opposite to what would naturally be expected (irony). (2) Pertaining to a figure of speech (irony) in which the intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning. ;void(0)) ISOLATION . . see: "ALONE" see: "FOREIGN POLICY" see: "NEUTRALITY" see: "PACIFISM" see: "SOLITUDE" Wherever the standard of freedom and independence ... shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But [America] does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy ... She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. --John Quincy Adams (17671848) 6th President of the United States. As Secretary of State [4 July 1821] in Walter LaFeber (ed.) _John Quincy Adams and Continental Empire_ [1965]. With the possible exception of worry, insecurity is the most contagious of fears. We catch it from each other in a backhanded way. For instance, one person may compensate for her feelings of insecurity by putting others down. She doesnt become any more secure by so doing, but those whom she puts down certainly feel less secure. As sensitive as she may be to criticism or slights, she is utterly insensitive to how her own words or actions may be hurtful. This drives others away, which adds to her own insecurity by isolating her from the kinds of personal connections that might help her overcome it. Insecurity is rooted in isolation, an isolation we more often create than inherit. Either we drive people away or we run from them. --Forrest Church (19482009) American theologian and author. _Freedom from Fear: Finding the Courage to Act, Love, and Be_ [2004] The isolation which has meant so much to the United States, and still means so much, cannot persist in its present form ... Hitherto, the American preference and desire for peace has constituted the chief justification for its isolation. At some future time the same purpose ... may demand intervention ... If [the United States] wants peace, it must be spiritually and physically prepared to fight for it ... The power of the United States might well be sufficient when thrown into the balance, to tip the scale in favor of a comparatively pacific settlement of international complications. Under such conditions a policy of neutrality would be a policy of irresponsibility and unwisdom. --Herbert Croly (18691930) American political writer and editor. _The Promise of American Life_, pp. 311-12 [1909] ;void(0)) ITALY . . see: "PLACES" for related links - When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere. --St. Ambrose (c. 339397) French-born bishop of Milan. Advice to St. Augustine, in Jeremy Taylor _Ductor Dubitantium_ [1660], 1, 1, 5. & see: When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done. --Robert Burton (15771640) English scholar, cleric, and author. _The Anatomy of Melacholy_, pt. III, sec. iv, mem. 2, subs. 1 [16211651] - [Telegraphed message upon arriving in Venice:] STREETS FLOODED. PLEASE ADVISE. --Robert Benchley (18891945) American humorist and newspaper columnist. Quoted in Robert E. Drennan (ed.) _The Algonquin Wits_[1968]. Travelling is the ruin of all happiness! There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy. --Fanny Burney (17521840) English novelist and diarist. _Cecilia_, bk IV, ch. 2 [1782] The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad. --G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (18741936) English essayist, novelist, and poet. "Roman Converts", in _Dublin Review_ [1925]. - The Circus, the largest of several in Rome, had been in use perhaps since the time of the kings and had been improved and enlarged by Julius Caesar. After the signal had been given for the sport to begin, by a state official who dropped a white napkin onto the sand-covered arena, there would be displays of equestrian skill followed by horse races, then by chariot races, as many as twelve chariots emerging from the stables at once. Drawn by two or four horses, occasionally by ten, the chariots hurtled round the track, bearing the colors, red, white, blue or green, of the factiones or stables from which they came. Their highly skilled and highly rewarded drivers, heroes to the shouting crowd, leaned back against the reins, whips in their hands, clothed in tunics of their stables' colors, daggers sheathed by their side in case they had to cut themselves loose after one of the accidents that frequently occurred when a charioteer turned too close to the posts at the end of the track or brought his chariot into collision with another in the clouds of sand thrown up by the wheels and the thundering hoofs. While women and men were allowed to sit next to each other at the Circus, this was not permitted in the Colosseum. This vast amphi- theatre, with surrounding walls rising in four stories to a height of 187 feet, stood on the site of the drained lake in the grounds of Nero's vanished palace, the Domus Aurea, and had been dedicated in AD 80 by the Emperor Titus. Here women were relegated to the top story, an enclosed colonnaded gallery which they shared with the poor; beneath them, also enclosed, sat slaves and foreigners; below them were tiers of marble seats, the upper reserved for the middle class, the lower for more distinguished citizens. The most distinguished of all senators, magistrates, priests, Vestal Virgins and members of the Emperor's family sat in boxes just above the level of the ringside, from which they were separated by rotating cylinders designed to prevent enraged animals from getting into the stands should they manage to leap over the barriers. These privileged spectators were further protected from the rain or the rays of an unpleasantly hot sun by an awning which was pulled across the top of the amphitheatre by sailors on the roof of the topmost gallery. The show was usually opened by a parade of gladiators: impressed criminals, prisoners of war and men who had chosen the precarious existence in the hope of achieving fame or the admiration of women. Wearing purple and gold cloaks, they drove around the arena in char- iots, then, followed by slaves carrying their weapons, they marched towards the Emperor's box where, with raised right arms, they cried, 'Hail, Emperor! We who are about to die salute thee!' [ . . . ] Some gladiators appeared in armor, others were almost naked, most had heavy swords and daggers, some had nets in which they hoped to entangle their opponents before killing them with a spear or a trident. The fate of a wounded gladiator who fell to the ground was decided by his antagonist if the Emperor was not present or, if the imperial box was occupied, by the Emperor himself. As the spectators who had roared in wild excitement throughout the contest shouted their advice, he, raising his thumb as a sign of reprieve, or turning it down as a verdict of death, made his decision known. --Christopher Hibbert _Cities and Civilizations_ [2003 ed.] Ch. 3 "Rome in the days of the Emperor Trajan AD 98-117" - Artists will sometimes speak of Rome with disparagement or indifference while it is before them; but no artist ever lived in Rome and then left it, without sighing to return. --George Stillman Hillard (18081879) American lawyer and author. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_, p. 35 [1872]. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. --Edgar Allan Poe (18091849) American poet and short-story writer. "To Helen" [1845, rev. ed.] I saw the new Italian navy. Its boats have glass bottoms so they can see the old Italian navy. --Peter F. Secchia (b. 1937) American ambassador to Italy [1989-93]. Quoted in "Newsweek" [1990]. In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. --Orson Welles (19151985) American motion-picture actor, director, producer, and writer. "The Third Man" [1949 film] (Words added by Welles to Graham Geene's script - ODTQ.) end page | IDAHO - IDIOTS | IDLENESS - ILLEGAL ALIENS | ILLNESS - IMMATURITY | IMMIGRATION & IMMORALITY | IMMORTALITY - IMPOSTORS | IMPRESSIONABLE - INDECISION | INDEPENDENCE - INDIANA | INDIFFERENCE - INDIVIDUALITY | INDOCTRINATION - INFORMATION | INGRATITUDE - INNOVATION | INNUENDO - INSPIRATION | INSULTS - INTEGRITY | INTELLECTUALS - INTENTIONS | INTERESTED(ING) - INTUITION | INVENTIONS - ITALY | IRAQ | ISLAM | JAIL - JOGGING | JOHNSON (LYNDON) - JOY | JOURNALISM | JUDGE (TO) - JUSTICE | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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