Category Archives: Quotations

Grass huts

Posted on 16/11/2022 by rimboval

A dictum from Camille Paglia: If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.

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The enemy, unexpected

Posted on 08/11/2022 by rimboval

I love quotations and generally find time to reference them and pin them down for future use.  This is not too difficult, but one particular quotation remains unplaceable, even after years of searching. It is this, so far as I … Continue reading →

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Battlefield prediction

Posted on 23/11/2019 by rimboval

For years I have tried to trace, but without success, the original source of this outstanding quotation, supposedly an aphorism of Moltke the Elder: the actual wording is as I recall it: “In war, the enemy will have three courses … Continue reading →

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The fall of princes

Posted on 21/11/2019 by rimboval

For the best comment about Prince Andrew, recall this remark by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, written in 1764: “The generality of princes, once stripped of the purple and cast naked into the world, … Continue reading →

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Italian pride

Posted on 12/04/2017 by rimboval

Stendhal’s love of gossip, acerbic comment and piercing observation throw up a continual stream of delight. Here he is, in 1816, on Italian pride speaking truth to power. In Bologna, it would take more courage than I possess to hint … Continue reading →

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Teachers’ status

Posted on 10/12/2012 by rimboval

One of  my Italian relatives has found this interesting apophthegm about the status of teachers and reposted it on Facebook.  Translated, it says: “In Japan, the only citizens not obliged to bow to the Emperor are teachers.  This is because … Continue reading →

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Cold wind

Posted on 31/10/2012 by rimboval

The freshening cold winds of autumn in southern England always bring to mind some delightful lines of poetry I’ve collected over the years.  To introduce some here, I’d like to recall reading an interview by the actress Angie Dickinson, in … Continue reading →

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An Estonian in Paris

Posted on 03/10/2012 by rimboval

For a rich young Estonian aristocrat, a decorated officer in the victorious allied armies entering Paris in March 1814, the city was clearly a paradise in which he could live life to the full; in his case, very much a … Continue reading →

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Race the servants

Posted on 26/09/2012 by rimboval

Some index entries are even more interesting than the content of the book itself.  The index to Richard Coe’s translation of Stendhal‘s Rome, Naples and Florence (Calder, 1959) contains gems like this for which there are no actual referents in … Continue reading →

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Heaven and Hell

Posted on 27/07/2012 by rimboval

A famous joke, probably politically incorrect, first told to me by an Armenian businessman in East Africa 27 or so years ago: HEAVEN is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and … Continue reading →

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