Many film and musical enthusiasts know who wrote what score to each of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. But what about classic lines of dialogue. Try to guess in which  film a specific line is spoken. Extra points if you can identify who said the line in the film.

 

1. “ Chance is the fool’s name for fate.”
2. “All’s fair in love and war, and this is revolution!”
3. “I told you, I haven’t even met her. But I’d kinda like to marry her… I think I will.”
4. “The trick is to keep your mind a blank.”
5. “Aunt Cora, were you ever anxious to dance with a man you dreamed you danced with?”
6. “Well, you won it for me. How did you get all those men from the overalls factory to vote for me?”
7. “Listen. No one could teach you to dance in a million years. Take my advice and save your money!”
8. “Thank you. I’m touched, the piano’s touched, and Tchaikovsky’s touched.”
9. Tell me, little boy, did you get a whistle or baseball bat with that suit”? “
10. “You can’t see any further than your funny nose!”

 

 

I was asked by the Chappaqua Public Library Program Coordinator to compile a small collection of quotations on the subject of the Eclipse. In honor of today’s solar eclipse, here is that requested collection for your reading pleasure.

Quotations On The Eclipse Through The Ages
Compiled by Philip Harwood

“On that day, says the Lord God,
I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.”
Said to refer to the solar eclipse of 15 June 763 BC.
From: Amos, Chapter 8, verse 9 (Old Testament)

“Here lie the bodies of Ho and Hi,
Whose fate, though sad, is risible;
Being slain because they could not spy
Th’ eclipse which was invisible.”
Author unknown
Said to refer to the Chinese eclipse of 2136 BC or 2159 BC.

“. . . and the Sun has perished
out of heaven,
and an evil mist hovers over all.”
Said to refer to a total solar eclipse of 16 April 1178 BC.
From: Homer (Greek), The Odyssey (8th century BC).

“Zeus, the father of the
Olympic Gods, turned
mid-day into night, hiding the light
of the dazzling Sun;
and sore fear came upon men.”
Archilochus (c680-c640 BC), Greek poet
Refers to the total solar eclipse of 6 April 648 BC.

“God can cause unsullied light to spring out of black night. He can also shroud in a dark cloud of gloom the pure light of day”
Refers to the solar eclipse of 30 April 463 BC, which was nearly total at Thebes.
Pinder (Greek poet) Ninth Paean, addressed to the Thebans.

“They call it a great wonder
That the Sun would not
though the sky was cloudless
Shine warm upon the men.”
Sighvald, Icelandic poet.
Said to refer to a solar eclipse of AD 1030, during a battle near Trondheim.

“And now the house of York, thrust from the crown
By shameful murder of a guiltless king
And lofty proud encroaching tyranny,
Burns with revenging fire; whose hopeful colours
Advance our half-faced sun, striving to shine,
Under the which is writ ‘Invitis nubibus.’
The commons here in Kent are up in arms:
And, to conclude, reproach and beggary
Is crept into the palace of our king.
And all by thee. Away! convey him hence.”
William Shakespeare King Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 1 (Late 1580s).

“No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun…..
From William Shakespeare Sonnet 35 XXXV. (Mid-1590s)

“It was that fatall and perfidious Bark
Built in th’ eclipse, and rigg’d with curses dark,
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.”
John Milton Lycidas, Line 100 (1637)

“High on her speculative tower
Stood Science waiting for the hour
When Sol was destined to endure
That darkening of his radiant face
Which Superstition strove to chase,
Erewhile, with rites impure.”
William Wordsworth The Eclipse of the Sun, 1820

“The Star of Night [the Moon], by its comparative proximity and the rapidly recurring spectacle of its various phases, was with the Sun one of the first to attract the attention of the dwellers on Earth. But the Sun is tiring to the eyes, and the brightness of its light forced the observers to turn aside their prying glances.
Jules Verne (1828-1905) From Earth to Moon

For an hour or more we journeyed on, till at length the eclipse began to pass, and that edge of the sun which had disappeared the first became again visible. In another five minutes there was sufficient light to see our whereabouts . . .”
H Rider Haggard, King Soloman’s Mines (1886).

“I knew that the only total eclipse of the sun in the first half of the sixth century occurred on the twenty-first of June, A.D. 528 o.s., and began at three minutes after twelve noon. I knew also that no total eclipse of the sun was due in what to me was the present year – i.e., 1879.
From: Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).

“At a Lunar Eclipse
Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.
Thomas Hardy At a Lunar Eclipse (1903)

The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth’s gods.
H.P. Lovecraft

“I looked up, a split-second Prometheus, and looked away. The bitten silhouette of the sun lingered redly on my retinas.”
John Updike, Eclipse (Short Story) 1963

‘Yes! But only one sun lies in its plane of revolution.’ He jerked a thumb at the
shrunken sun above. ‘Beta! And it has been shown that the eclipse will occur
only when the arrangement of the suns is such that Beta is alone in its hemisphere
and at maximum distance, at which time the moon is invariably at minimum
distance. The eclipse that results, with the moon seven times the apparent diameter of Beta, covers all of Lagash and lasts well over half a day, so that no spot on the planet escapes the effects. That eclipse comes once every two thousand and forty nine years.’
Isaac Asimov, Nightfall, 1941

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