gunpowder quotes

Vim et virtutem et consequentias rerum inventarum notare juvat; quae non in aliis manifestius occurrunt, quam in illis tribus quae antiquis incognitae, et quarum primordia, licet recentia, obscura et ingloria sunt: Artis nimirum Imprimendi, PulverisTormentarii, et Acus Nauticae. Haec enim tria rerum faciem et statum in orbe terrarum mutaverunt. It is well to observe the force and virtue and consequence of discoveries, and these are to be seen nowhere more conspicuously than in those three which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely, printing, gunpowder and the magnet [ie the compass]. For thesethreehave changedthewholefaceand stateof things throughout the world.

- Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
  Novum Organum, bk.1, aphorism129 (translated by  James Spedding).

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she- bear coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. 'What! no soap?' So he died and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the Grand Panjandrumhimself, withthelittleround buttonat top; and they all fell to playing the game of catch-as- catch-can till the gunpowder ran out of theheels of their boots.

- Samuel Foote
Responding to a challenge from the actor Charles Macklin that there was no speech he could not repeat from memory after just one hearing. Macklin had to acknowledge defeat. Foote's phrases 'no soap'and 'the grand Panjandrum' became widely adopted. Quoted in Maria Edgeworth Harry and Lucy (1825), vol.2.

One oughttoacknowledgethesignificance for mankind of the simultaneous invention of gunpowder and printer's ink.

- Karl Kraus
Aphorism collected in Heinrich Fischer (ed) Beim Wort genommen (1955). Translated by Harry Zohn in Half-truths and one-and-a-half truths (1986).