“The laws of the state forbid that walls abutting on public property should be more than a foot and a half thick. …Now brick walls, unless two or three bricks thick, cannot support more than one story; certainly not if they are only a foot and a half in thickness.”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter III, Sec. 4

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 4

The Last Lecture (2007)

Variant: If a dick don't get hard off of cocaine, what would you aks it?

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter V, Sec. 3
Context: The thickness of the wall should, in my opinion, be such that armed men meeting on top of it may pass one another without interference. In the thickness there should be set a very close succession of ties made of charred olive wood, binding the two faces of the wall together like pins, to give it lasting endurance. For that is a material which neither decay, nor the weather, nor time can harm, but even though buried in the earth or set in the water it keeps sound and useful forever. And so not only city walls but substructures in general and all walls that require a thickness like that of a city wall, will be long in falling to decay if tied in this manner.

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VIII, Sec. 7
Context: Our workmen, in their hurry to finish, devote themselves only to the facings of the walls, setting them upright but filling the space between with a lot of broken stones and mortar thrown in anyhow. This makes three different sections in the same structure; two consisting of facing and one of filling between them. The Greeks, however, do not build so; but laying their stones level and building every other stone lengthwise into the thickness, they do not fill the space between, but construct the thickness of their walls in one solid and unbroken mass from the facings to the interior. Further, at intervals they lay single stones which run through the entire thickness of the wall. These stones... by their bonding powers... add very greatly to the solidity of the walls.

OK who's going to identify that?
The Guardian, Saturday 26 April 2008

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter III, Sec. 2
Context: Bricks will be most serviceable if made two years before using; for they cannot dry thoroughly in less time. When fresh undried bricks are used in a wall, the stucco covering stiffens and hardens into a permanent mass, but the bricks settle and... the motion caused by their shrinking prevents them from adhering to it, and they are separated from their union with it.... at Utica in constructing walls they use brick only if it is dry and made five years previously, and approved as such by the authority of a magistrate.

Source: Hunters of the Dusk