the nut-brown beverage
“The Wassail Bowl was sometimes composed of ale instead of wine, with nutmeg, sugar, toast, ginger, and roasted crabs; in this way the nut-brown beverage is still prepared in some old families, and around the hearths of substantial farmers at Christmas.”
—Washington Irvingin a footnote to The Chrismas Dinner. From The Sketch Book, 1820.
The merry brown bowle
“The brown bowle,
The merry brown bowle,
As it goes round about-a,
Fill
Still,
Let the world say what it will,
And drink your fill all out-a.”
—from a Wassail chanson quoted by Washington Irving in The Chrismas Dinner. From The Sketch Book, 1820.
The fires of creation
“Radio telescopes have detected the cosmic black-body background radiation, the distant echo of the event called the Big Bang. The fires of creation are being observed today.”
—Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain, 1979.
Galileo’s impression
“Galileo’s impression was that the dark, flat areas on the moon were seas, real watery oceans, and that the bright and rougher regions densely studded with craters were continents. These maria (Latin for “seas”) were named primarily after states of mind or conditions of nature: Mare Frigoris (the Sea of Cold), Lacus Somniorum (the Lake of Dreams), Mare Crisium (the Sea of Crises), Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows), Mare Serenitatis (the Sea of Serenity), Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms), Mare Nubium (the Sea of Clouds), Mare Fecunditatis (the Sea of Fertility), Sinus Aestuum (the Bay of Billows), Mare Imbrium (the Sea of Rains) and Mare Tranquillitatis (the Sea of Tranqullity). . . .”
—Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain, 1979.
of gold and diamonds
“However dangerous . . . the shock of a comet, it might . . . only do damage at the part of the Earth where it actually struck. . . . Perhaps we should be very surprised to find that the debris of these masses that we despised were formed of gold and diamonds; but who would be the most astonished, we, or the comet-dwellers, who would be cast on our Earth? What strange beings each would find the other!”
—Maupertuis, Lettre sur la com’te, 1752. Quoted by Carl Sagan in Broca’s Brain, 1979.
the Black Stone
“[T]he Kaaba has been carefully preserved, although there seems never to have been a true scientific examination of it. There are some who believe it to be a dark, stony rather than metallic meteorite. Recently two geologists have suggested, on admittedly quite fragmentary evidence, that it is instead an agate. Some Muslim writers believe that the colour of the Kaaba was originally white, not black, and that the present colour is due to its repeated handling. The official view of the Keeper of the Black Stone is that it was placed in its present position by the patriarch Abraham and fell from a religious rather than an astronomical heaven. . . .”
—Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain, 1979.
the highest circle of spiralling powers
“We have seen the highest circle of spiralling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.”
—Nikos Kazantzakis, 1948. Quoted by Carl Sagan in Broca’s Brain, 1979.
creeping murmur and the poring dark
“Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.”
—William Shakespeare, Henry V. Quoted by Carl Sagan in Broca’s Brain, 1979.
Chico
“They came on the lot and were assigned offices, and we had a few amusing phone calls from them. Chico called shortly after they moved in and said they had found some black widow spiders in the office and ‘somebody better send over some flies before they start eating us Jews.’”
—Goldie Arthur, Irving Thalberg’s personal secretary, quoted in Hello, I Must be Going: Groucho and His Friends, by Charlotte Chandler, 1978.
A certain look
“I: What do you think was the secret of Chico’s great charm for women?
GROUCHO: A certain look in his eyes.”
—from Hello, I Must be Going: Groucho and His Friends, by Charlotte Chandler, 1978.