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What translation/version of the Bible would Chaucer have read?
A few lines in Troilus and Criseyde remind me of a Hebrew Bible verse. I want to compare the language of the book to the language of the verse, and I'm assuming he wasn't reading it in the original Hebrew.
Sarah
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Sci-Fi Short Story - Life Saving Weight Loss
I recall a short story I read in High School. We read it in English class so it was likely published in an anthology intended for use in schools. (This was in Scotland in the 1970's if that helps.)
The story begins, I think, with a robot being…
Spagirl
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Does Gandalf ever say this in the book "The Hobbit", or is it made up for the movie?
In one scene in the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), before they set out on the adventure, Gandalf says to Bilbo:
You've been sitting quietly for far too long. Tell me, when did doilies and your mother's dishes become so important to…
Bagginssses
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Did Frodo want Bilbo to die?
I was reading in the first volume of the Lord of the Rings recently, and ran across this quote when Gandalf and Frodo are talking about the Ring for the first time after its true nature has been discovered.
"There wasn’t any permanent harm done,…
anonymous2
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Who first said this quote about how we only sleep safely because "rough men stand ready" to fight on our behalf?
One of my favorite quotes is Churchill's
"We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us."
But recently I found out that Orwell was attributed with
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at…
Scarlet Kleen
19
votes
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What are the "old euphemisms" in The Great Gatsby?
In chapter 6 of The Great Gatsby, Nick describes Daisy's reaction to the people of West Egg:
But the rest offended her—and inarguably, because it wasn’t a gesture but an emotion. She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented “place.” that…
Keshav Srinivasan
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Why all those tangents in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables?
Anyone who's ever read Victor Hugo's immortal masterpiece Les Misérables knows that it's a long read... mostly because Hugo goes on a bunch of random tangents in the middle—on such topics as the battle of Waterloo, Paris and its urchins, a certain…
CHEESE
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Why does this copy of the Iliad mention "the will of God"?
In my copy of the Iliad, which is a Mentor Book published in April 1938, it opens like this:
An angry man—there is my story: The bitter rancour of Achillês, prince of the house of Peleus, which brought a thousand troubles upon the Achaian host.…
Mithical
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Where does this Federico Garcia Lorca quote come from? Is it a fake?
The quote is the following:
Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.
I ran into this quote in a book named Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems at the beginning of chapter 7: The Evolution of…
matiascelasco
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No mayonnaise in Ireland?
Apparently there is some kind of running joke about John Donne's famous line "No man is an island", prose sometimes quoted as poetry, being misquoted as "No mayonnaise in Ireland". It's mentioned here, for example, as a "classic misunderstanding",…
Rand al'Thor
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What do these espionage tradecraft phrases from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy mean?
When Ricky Tarr is recounting his story to George Smiley, he speculates that Boris -- a Russian spy working undercover as a trade delegate -- was "waiting for a connect, working a letterbox, maybe, or trailing his coat and looking for a pass from a…
Tom
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How can you come out dry from the Sea of Knowledge?
In The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, what does Canby mean by:
"You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and still come out completely dry. Most people do."
What does he try to associate with 'knowledge' using the imagery of staying 'dry'…
chameleon
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What was the ethnicity of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights?
Though he was brought home by Mr. Earnshaw following a journey to Liverpool, there is no definitive answer to his ethnicity. Liverpool by 1740 had surpassed Bristol and London as the slave-trading capital of Britain. Did Emily Brontё envisage him to…
schizoid_man
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Do Daniel Handler's novels for adults share themes or tone with his Lemony Snicket work?
Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events, written under his Lemony Snicket pseudonym, delves into a great many intriguing themes -- the blindness and dysfunctionality of modern society; living with uncertainty and incomplete information; the…
Standback
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What is Devdas syndrome?
Post-Devdas works in Hindi literature analysis always use the term Devdas syndrome. Like "X work is suffering from Devdas syndrome" or "Y work tackled it quite well".
But what is this Devdas syndrome exactly? Is there an exact definition of it?
An…
Ankit Sharma
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