
“Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?”
"Good-by, Old Year, You Oaf or Why Don't They Pay the Bonus?" in The Primrose Path (1935)
Methodical Realism
“Every New Year is the direct descendant, isn't it, of a long line of proven criminals?”
"Good-by, Old Year, You Oaf or Why Don't They Pay the Bonus?" in The Primrose Path (1935)
“I'm descended from a long line of preachers and policemen.”
High Times interview (2002)
Context: I'm descended from a long line of preachers and policemen. Now, it's common knowledge that cops are congenital liars, and evangelists spend their lives telling fantastic tales in such a way as to convince otherwise rational people that they're factual. So, I guess I come by my narrative inclinations naturally. Moreover, I grew up in the rural South, where, although television has been steadily destroying it, there has always existed a love of colorful verbiage.
“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.”
Kant's Inaugural Dissertation (1770), Section III On The Principles Of The Form Of The Sensible World
Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter VI, Sec. 7-8
Context: Let the directions of your streets and alleys be laid down on the lines of division between the quarters of two winds. On this principle of arrangement the disagreeable force of the winds will be shut out from dwellings and lines of houses. For if the streets run full in the face of the winds, their constant blasts rushing in from the open country, and then confined by narrow alleys, will sweep through them with great violence. The lines of houses must therefore be directed away from the quarters from which the winds blow, so that as they come in they may strike against the angles of the blocks and their force thus be broken and dispersed.
On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)