Silly Roll Call

Famous quotes containing the words silly, roll and/or call:

    What a vast traffic is drove, what a variety of labour is performed in the world to the maintenance of thousands of families that altogether depend on two silly if not odious customs; the taking of snuff and smoking of tobacco; both of which it is certain do infinitely more hurt than good to those that are addicted to them!
    Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733)

    Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    If ever I should condescend to prose,
    I’ll write poetical commandments, which
    Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those
    That went before; in these I shall enrich
    My text with many things that no one knows,
    And carry precept to the highest pitch:
    I’ll call the work ‘Longinus o’er a Bottle,
    Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle.’
    George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)