Famous quotes containing the words longest, recorded and/or confirmed:
“Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,—effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,—and devour him, partly for experiment’s sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“What is impossible by the nature of things is not confirmed by any law.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)