Mr Al-Khapoun's Christmas Quiz, 2006

Mr Al-Khapoun, of the Philistine/Liberace Organisation, has always felt that it is best to retire while you are the top and leave your fans wanting more. As he has never reached the top of anything more challenging than a bus and his fans, if he has any, have never wanted any in the first place, he has therefore resolved to carry on as before. He accordingly presents for your annoyance eleven quotations, to be identified as accurately as possible without actually doing anything that might work, such as using a search engine. One quotation has had a distinctive proper name removed from it. As usual Mr Al-Khapoun has supplied some free translations of those that are not in English. He gave out some unhelpful clues and has now released the answers.
  1. Er ist sehr spät, er hat keinen Augenblick zu verlieren, wenn er den Zug erreichen will. Er will es und er will es nicht. Aber die Zeit drängt, sie geißelt in vorwärts; er eilt, sich den Billett zu verschaffen un sieht im Tumult der Halle nach dem hier stationierten Beamten der Hotelgesellschaft um. Der Mensch zeigt sich und meldet, der Koffer sei aufgegeben. Schon aufgegeben? Ja, bestens – nach Como. Nach Como? Und aus hastigem Hin und Her, aus zornigen Fragen und betretenen Antworten kommt zutage, daß der Koffer, schon im Gepäckbeförderungsamt des Hotels Excelsior, zusammen mit anderer, fremder Bagage, in völlig falsche Richtung geleitet wurde.

    He is very late: there is not a moment to be lost if he is to catch the train. He wants to catch it, and yet he does not. But time presses, and bullies him on: he hurries to buy his ticket, and looks around him in the chaos of the station hall for the hotel employee waiting there. The man appears and says that his case has already been sent off. Sent off already? Yes, certainly: to Como. Como? And after confused discussion, angry questions and apologetic answers, it turns out that the case has been mixed up, back at the Hotel Excelsior, with the luggage of others and has been sent off in completely the wrong direction.

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  2. It is Sunday afternoon, preferably before the war. The wife is already asleep in the armchair, and the children have been sent out for a nice long walk. You put your feet up on the sofa, settle your spectacles on your nose, and open the News of the World.

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  3.             Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
                Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
                Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
                The supper and knives of a mood.

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  4. In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing master of the neighbourhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation, and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the mill pond, of a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of X.

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  5.                                                 The Sea
                Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
                            In light and music; widowed Genoa wan
                By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
                            Murmuring "Where's Doria?" fair Milan,
                                        Within whose veins long ran
                The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel
                            To bruise his head.

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  6. Je viens d’en recevoir une ce matin sur laquelle le comte Zurla-Contarini a eu la satisfaction d’écrire de sa proper main le numéro 20715.

    I got one this morning, on which the Count of Zurla-Contarini had with great pleasure personally written the number 20715.

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  7. “She was crawling already when I got here. One week, less, and the baby who was sitting up and turning over when I put her on the wagon was crawling already. Devil of a time keeping her off the stairs. Nowadays babies get up and walk soon’s you drop em, but twenty years ago when I was a girl, babies stayed babies longer. Howard didn’t pick up his own head till he was nine months.”

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  8. E cosi avendo la figliuola allogata, e sappiendo bene a cui, diliberò di più non dimorar quivi; e limosinando traversò l’isola e con Perotto pervenne in Gales non senza gran fatica, sì come colui che d’andare a piè non era uso.

    And thus, having accommodated his daughter, and well knowing who was responsible for her, he decided not to remain there any longer. So he crossed the island with Perotto, begging, and got to Wales: not without considerable difficulty, being unused to travelling on foot.

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  9.             Lou fùsioù de mestre Gervaï
                Toujou lou cargou, toujou lou cargou.
                Lou fùsioù de mestre Gervaï
                Toujou lou cargou, part jamaï.

                Master Gervais's rifle,
                Always loading, always loading.
                Master Gervais's rifle,
                Always loading, never fired.

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  10. This Deity might look like a myopic scrivener, but It could certainly mobilize the traditional apparatus of divine rage. Clouds massed outside the window; wind and thunder shook the room. Trees fell in the Fields.

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  11.             Secluded from domestic strife
                Jack Book-worm led a college life;
                A fellowship at twenty-five
                Made him the happiest man alive.
                He drank his glass, and crack'd his joke,
                And freshmen wonder'd as he spoke.

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