“And new-laid eggs, which Baucis' busy care
Turn'd by a gentle fire and roasted rare.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book viii. Baucis and Philemon, Line 97.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
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John Dryden 196
English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century 1631–1700Related quotes
“The new fire is laid, but the particular kind of match is missing.”
Vision of the Future Through Eyes of Science, News of the World, 31 October 1937
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol IV, Churchill at Large, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 414.
The 1930s
Context: Three hundred years ago it would have seemed absurd to say that this black mineral, this sea-coal, which could be used as a substitute for wood to burn in one's grate, could be applied to revolutionize human affairs. Today we know that there is another source of energy a million times greater. We have not yet learned how to harness it or apply it, but it is there. Occasionally in complicated processes in the laboratory a scientist observes transmutations, re-arrangements in the core of the atom, which is known as the nucleus, which generate power at a rate hundreds of thousands of times greater than is produced when coal is burned and when, as the scientists put it, a carbon atom satisfied its affinity for an oxygen molecule. It can scarcely be doubted that a way to induce and control these effects can be found. The new fire is laid, but the particular kind of match is missing.
“2018. He set my House afire, only to roast his Eggs.”
Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1751) : Pray don't burn my House to roast your Eggs.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
On the Supreme Court's decision to cancel 2G spectrum licences, as quoted in Telecom sector not to lay 'golden egg' for a while, thanks to Supreme Court: Kapil Sibal http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-04-03/news/38248797_1_telecom-sector-golden-egg-apex-court, The Economic Times (3 April 2013)
“Remorse, the fatal egg by Pleasure laid.”
Source: The Progress of Error (1782), Line 240.
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. V
Following the Equator (1897)
speaking of London coffeehouses in the late 1600s
[Drummond, J.C., Wilbraham, Anne, The Englishman's food: a history of five centuries of English diet., 1957, Cape, London, 978-0224601689, 116, Rev. ed.] This source cites Misson; citation needed for original statement.
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), New England Two Centuries Ago