A garland of quotations LXXXI

Culled from the finest pharaonics in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday

Why think of Angkor, or Stonehenge, of Luxor and Karnak, when I might win the secrets of the moon!
•Jack Williamson, “The Moon Era” (1932).

Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.
•Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas Prince of Abyssinia (1759).

Eratosthenes lost his sight by ophthalmia, then as now a curse of the valley of the Nile, and refusing to live when he was no longer able to read, he committed suicide by starvation in 194 B.C.
•Walter W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics (1888).

The pyramids themselves must perish, but the grass that grows between their disjointed stones will be renewed from year to year.
•Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820).

Smyth, like a good pseudo-scientist, first published a book on the Great Pyramid and then went to Egypt to confirm the theories set forth therein.
•de Camp & Ley, Lands Beyond (1952)

Through fane and palace court and labyrinth mined
      With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep—
•P. B. Shelley, The Witch of Atlas (1820)

I have been too lazy to stir out. But I know I am not lazy. Here is an incalculable deception. Lazy we are not. When we seem so, our cyclonic wishes are baffled, and pride requires us to be indifferent. ¶The Egyptians were right to make one of their gods a cat. They, the worshipers, knew that only a cat’s eyes could see into their interior darkness.
•Bellow, Dangling Man (1944).

To signify an Horoscopus [observer of the hours], they delineate a MAN EATING THE HOURS, not that the man eats the hours, for that is impossible, but because food is prepared for men according to the hours.
•Horapollo Nilous, Hieroglyphica (ca. 490).

A plague on Egypt’s arts! I say;
Embalm the dead! on senseless clay
      Rich wines and spices waste!
Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I
Bound in a precious pickle lie,
      Which I can never taste?

Let me embalm this flesh of mine
With turtle-fat, and Bourdeaux wine,
      And spoil th’ Egyptian trade!
Than Humphry’s Duke more happy I—
Embalmed alive, old Quin shall die
      A mummy ready made.
•David Garrick, “Quin’s Soliloquy on Seeing Duke Humphrey at Saint Alban’s” (1765).

Writhen in wonder wise,
After the Saracen’s guise,
With a whim-wham,
Knit with a trim-tram,
Upon her brain pan,
Like an Egyptian,
•Skelton, The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng (1516-17).

What does a man learn by travelling? Is Beauclerk the better for travelling? What did Lord Charlemont learn in his travels, except that there was a snake in one of the pyramids of Egypt?
•Samuel Johnson, quoted in Macaulay, “Samuel Johnson ” (1831).

References: Williamson: Wonder Stories vol. 3 #9; Horapollo: Trans. Alexander Turner Cory, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous (William Pickering, 1860); Garrick: in Select Epigrams, Volume the First (Sampson Lowe, 1797); Macaulay: Critical and Historical Essays vol. 2 (Everyman’s, 1967); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.