rocket quotes

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! Keynes And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through thenight that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

- Francis Scott Key
  'The Star-Spangled Banner', originally published as'The Defence of Fort M'Henry' in the Baltimore Patriot, 20 Sep; it commemorates the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, by the British,13^14 Sep.

The final event to himself has been, that as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

-Thomas Paine
  Of Edmund Burke. Letters to theAddressers on the late Proclamation.