Tropical Years

Famous quotes containing the words tropical and/or years:

    “Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
    A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
    That frequently happens in tropical climes
    When a vessel is, so to speak, “snarked.””
    —Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)

    “When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.”
    —Horace Walpole (1717–1797)