I have already informed my readers, that bull-baiting, or worrying of bulls with dogs, was one of the spectacles exhibited by the jugglers and their successors. It is also necessary to observe, that this cruel pastime was not confined to the boundaries of the bear-gardens; but was universally practiced on various occasions, in almost every town or village throughout the kingdom, and especially in market towns, where we find it was sanctioned by the law; and in some of them, I believe, the bull-rings, to which the unfortunate animals were fastened, are remaining to the present hour. It may seem strange, that the legislature should have permitted the exercise of such a barbarous diversion, which was frequently productive of much mischief by drawing together a large concourse of idle and dissipated persons, and affording them an opportunity of committing many grross disorders with impunity. Indeed a public bull-baiting rarely ended without some riot and confusion.
Joseph StruttRelated topics
almost believe committing concourse confusion cruel diversion drawing exercise find hour idle impunity kingdom large law legislature market mischief necessary observe opportunity pastime permit present public remaining riot should strange town unfortunate village worrying spectacles occasions dogsRelated quotes
The doctor begins to lose freedom.... First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren't equally divided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go.... All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.
Ronald Reagan
Unfortunately... the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.
John Herschel
Dear brothers and sisters ... we cannot but recall the crimes of these criminal [Jews] throughout history. ... Why did France, in 1253, expel and uproot the Jewish entity which was represented by the ghetto? Why did they expel them? Because they sucked the blood of the French, because they shed the blood of the French, slaughtered them, stole their money, and conspired against them. At the end of the day, the French had no choice but to expel them in 1253. ... The series of expulsions continues to this day, ... and Allah willing, their expulsion from Palestine in its entirety is certain to come. We are no weaker or less honourable than the peoples that expelled and annihilated the Jews. The day we expel them is drawing near. ... We extend our hands to feed these hungry dogs and wild beasts, and they devoured our fingers. We have learned the lesson: there is no place for you among us, and you have no future among the nations of the world. You are headed to annihilation.
Mahmoud al-Zahar
My most dear lord, King and husband, / The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things. / Katharine the Quene.
Catherine of Aragon
Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, - the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, - to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, - an hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect.
Henry David Thoreau
