Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 2000

Well, you must have been expecting it, knowing what has happened in previous years. Mr Al-Khapoun, of the Philistine/Liberace Organisation, is implacable. He has another ten quotations for you to identify, and serve you right for having read any of them in the first place. All the authors are at least moderately famous, not necessarily for the reasons you might suppose, and all extracts are quoted here in the orginal language. Mr Al-Khapoun has supplied his own translations of the ones that are not in English, even though he is not himself entirely sure what some of them mean. Some clues will appear in the new year and the answers in late January.
  1. The cricket-moralists are agitated by quite another problem: whether B. was subjectively in good faith when he recommended nitrogen.

    Clue
    Answer

  2. I afterwards came to learn, that the term theology was by them quite misunderstood, and that they had some crude conceptions that nothing was taught at Oxford but the black arts, which ridiculous idea prevailed over all the south of Scotland.

    Clue
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  3.                                                                   Can it be
                          That she who scarce but yesterday upheld
                          The dome of empire, so the twain seemed one,
                          Whose goodness shone and radiated round
                          The circle of her still expanding rule,
                          Whose sceptre was self-sacrifice, whose throne
                          Only a loftier height from which to scan
                          The purpose of her people, their desires,
                          Thoughts, hopes, fears, needs, joys, sorrows, sadnesses
                          Their strength in weal, their comforter in woe-
                          That this her mortal habitation should
                          Lie cold and tenantless!

    Clue
    Answer

  4. Gestern waren wir in Vicenza. Vincenza muß man sehen wegen des Palladio; Geert sagte mir, daß in ihm alles Moderne wurzele. Natürlich nur in bezug auf Baukunst. Hier in Padua (wo wir heute früh ankamen) sprach er im Hotelwagen etliche Male vor sich hin: `Er liegt in Padua begraben', und was überrascht, als er von mir vernahm, daß ich diese Wörte noch nie gehört hätte.

    [Yesterday we were in Vicenza. You have to see Vincenza, because of Palladio. Geert told me that everything modern could be traced back to him. This only applies to architecture, of course. Here in Padua, where we arrived early today, he said several times to himself on the way to the Hotel `He is buried in Padua,' and was surprised when he found out from me that I had never heard this phrase before.]

    Clue
    Answer

  5. Publishers should correct the misapprehension that a scholar's distinction in one field implies authority in another. And as long as that misapprehension exists, distinguished scholars should resist the temptation to abuse it.

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  6.                       Mais, bast! arcane tel élut pour confident
                          Le jonc vast et jumeau dont sous l'azure on joue:
                          Qui, détournant à soi le trouble de la joue,
                          Rêve, dans un solo long, que nous amusions
                          La beauté d'alentour par des confusions
                          Fausses entre elle-même et notre chant crédule;
                          Et de faire aussi haut que l'amour se module
                          Évanouir du songe ordinaire de dos
                          Ou de flanc pur suivis avec mes regards clos,
                          Une sonore, vaine et monotone ligne.

    [But enough! a hidden one chose to speak through the great double reed which is played under blue skies: it takes to itself the waverings of the cheek and dreams, in a long solo, that we might amuse the beauty of the spot with misleading confusions between her own voice and our credulous song; and makes by the highest modulations of love, the mundane thoughts of back or bare flank seen by my hidden eyes disappear into a ringing, monotonous and unavoidable tone.]

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  7. But the island was very primitive. There were no railways and only one good road which ran along the northern coast. Human habitation was restricted to the coastal strips, and these were divided by the treeless volcanic ranges of the interior that rose to over 8000 feet and were crossed along their whole length of 160 miles by only one road, or track, that ran to within a few miles of Sfakia where it petered out at the edge of the escarpment above the town.

    Clue
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  8.                       And cheerfully at sea
                          Success you still entice
                          To get the pearl and gold
                          And ours to hold
                          Virginia,
                          Earth's only paradise.

                          Where nature hath in store
                          Fowl, venison and fish,
                          And the fruitfullest soil
                          Without your toil,
                          Three harvests more,
                          All greater than your wish.

                          And the ambitious vine
                          Crowns with his purple mass
                          The cedar reaching high
                          To kiss the sky,
                          The cypress, pine,
                          And useful sassafras.

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  9.       `Fu l'autore di un libro grande e tremendo, il Libellus de Antichristo, in cui egli vide cose che sarebbero accadute, e non fu ascoltato abbastanza.'
          `Il libro fu scritto prima del millennio,' disse Gugliemo, `e quelle cose non si sono avverate ...'

    [`He was the author of a great and tremendous book, the Libellus de Antichristo, in which he foresaw things that would come to pass, and he was not attended to sufficiently'
    `The book was written before the millennium,' said Gugliemo, `and those things don't seem to have come true...']

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  10. There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow; threatenings of a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed off in the experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the banks would be sure to break lower down the river when the tide came in with violence, and so the waters would be carried off, without causing more than temporary inconvenience, and losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, whom charity would relieve.

    Clue
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