First Of March Quotes & Sayings

One of the first problems to be faced at Niagara was how to get a wire over the gorge and its violent river. Ellet solved that nicely by offering five dollars to the first American boy to fly a kite over to the Canadian side. The prize was won by young Homer Walsh, who would tell the story for the rest of his days. Once the kite string was across, a succession of heavier cords and ropes was pulled over, and in a short time the first length of wire went on its way. After that, when the initial cable had been completed, Ellet decided to demonstrate his faith in it in a fashion people would not forget. He had an iron basket made up big enough to hold him and attached it to the cable with pulleys. Then stepping inside, on a morning in March 1848, he pulled himself over the gorge and back again, all in no more than fifteen minutes' time, and to the great excitement of crowds gathered along both rims. — David McCullough

For the first time in ten years, the March family gathered to perform the Twelfth Night Revels for the village of Blessingstoke, just as they had done in Master Shakespeare's day. The dragon breathed fire while the Turkish Knight brandished his sword at St. George, and when it was finished, the resurrected saint and his sad dragon stood in tableau while the white-robed chorus, of which Portia and I made two, sang of the blood-berried holly and the sweetly clinging ivy. Rather like Brisbane and myself, I thought fancifully. Both evergreen and hardy, one sturdy, one tenacious, and forever undivided. But now there was a new little branch grafted to our union. — Deanna Raybourn

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922] — Vladimir Lenin

The first of Sam and Rosie's children was born on the twenty-fifth of March, a date that Sam noted. — J.R.R. Tolkien

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.
[First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801] — Thomas Jefferson

December 16, 1846, the fifteen composing the "Forlorn Hope," left Donner Lake. January 17, 1847, as they reached Johnson's ranch; and February 5th Capt. Tucker's party started to the assistance of the emigrants. This first relief arrived February 19th at the cabins; the second relief, or Reed's party, arrived March 1st; the third, or Foster's, about the middle of March; and the fourth, or Fallon's, on the seventeenth of April. Upon the arrival of Capt. Fallon's company, the sight presented at the cabins beggars all description. Capt. R. P. Tucker, now of Goleta, Santa Barbara County, Cal., endeavors, in his correspondence, to give a slight idea of the scene. — C.F. McGlashan

P. C. Bhattacharya was the first non-ICS man to be appointed to the job and he had a soft ride. But in what would cause a major uproar today in Parliament and in the media, when the rupee was devalued by a huge 36 per cent in 1966, he was merely informed. The decision had been taken by Indira Gandhi in March that year when she visited the United States and met the representatives of the World Bank and IMF. But she kept it to herself till June. Even the finance minister didn't know, let alone the poor RBI governor. — T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan

Dust in a cloud, blinding weather,
Drums that rattle and roar!
A mother and daughter stood together
Beside their cottage door.

'Mother, the heavens are bright like brass,
The dust is shaken high,
With labouring breath the soldiers pass,
Their lips are cracked and dry.'

'Mother, I'll throw them apples down,
I'll bring them pails of water.'
The mother turned with an angry frown
Holding back her daughter.

'But mother, see, they faint with thirst,
They march away to die,'
'Ah, sweet, had I but known at first
Their throats are always dry.'

'There is no water can supply them
In western streams that flow,
There is no fruit can satisfy them
On orchard trees that grow.'

'Once in my youth I gave, poor fool,
A soldier apples and water,
So may I die before you cool
Your father's drouth, my daughter. — Robert Graves

If the entire course of evolution were compressed into a single year, the earliest bacteria would appear at the end of March, but we wouldn't see the first human ancestors until 6 a.m. on December 31st. The golden age of Greece, about 500 BCE, would occur just thirty seconds before midnight. — Jerry A. Coyne

Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel for the first violet which March brings us, the fragrant pledge of the new-fledged year. — Friedrich Schiller

I reached for her, pushing back the fall of hair-it was heavy and thick and smooth to the touch-and tilted her chin so that the moonlight shone on her wet face.
We married each other that night, there on a bed of fallen pine needles-even today, the scent of pitch-pine stirs me-with Henry's distant flute for a wedding march and the arching white birch boughs for our basilica. At first, she quivered like an aspen, and I was ashamed at my lack of continence, yet I could not let go of her. I felt like Peleus on the beach, clinging to Thetis, only to find that, suddenly, it was she who held me; that same furnace in her nature that had flared up in anger blazed again, in passion. — Geraldine Brooks

Abel was also the first of the human family to experience physical death- and it was through murder! He suffered death because of another's sin, the transgression of his elder brother Cain, who, in a fit of rage, killed him in cold blood. At the same time, thanks to faith in the sin-offering, he overcame death. The first man to descend into the Valley of the Shadow of Death was the first one to triumphantly march straight through it into the Paradise of Glory. He stepped from the excruciating pain of mortal manslaughter's hate into the exquisite land of eternal delights prepared by the Father's love! He led the way, like a pioneer, for all subsequent generations of men and women of faith throughout human history. — Robert L. Sumner

I saw the Eagle Tree for the first time on the third Monday of the month of March, which I guess could be considered auspicious if I believed in magic or superstition or religion ... — Ned Hayes

The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat .. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died ... then I got Deep Purples' Fireball album which was also a big influence .. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made — Yngwie Malmsteen

Glad you like my first tableau. Come and see number two. Hope it isn't spoilt; it was very pretty just now. This is 'Othello telling his adventures to Desdemona'."
The second window framed a very picturesque group of three. Mr March in an armchair, with Bess on a cushion at his feed, was listening to Dan, who, leaning against a pillow, was talking with unusual animation. The old man was in shadow, but little Desdemona was looking up with the moonlight full upon her face, quite absorbed in the story he was telling so well. The gay drapery over Dan's shoulder, his dark colouring and the gesture of his arm made the picture very striking and both very striking, and both spectators enjoyed it with silent pleasure, till Mrs Jo said in a quick whisper:
"I'm glad he's going away. He's too picturesque to have among so many romantic girls. Afraid his 'grand, gloomy and peculiar' style will be too much for our simple maids. — Louisa May Alcott

[W]e cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn, irresponsible and disinterested and able, perhaps for the first time for years, to look round, to look up - to look, for example, at the sky. — Virginia Woolf

The structure of 'March' was laid down for me before the first line was written, because my character has to exist within Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women' plotline. — Geraldine Brooks

It was a day in March, and the sky was a faint green with the first hint of spring. In Central Park, five hundred feet below, the earth caught the tone of the sky in a shade of brown that promised to become green, and the lakes lay like splinters of glass under the cobwebs of bare branches. — Ayn Rand

Lost in his thoughts he looked out from his shop at the shining loveliness of that first day of March. Opposite him, a little to the side, stood the eternal bridge, everlastingly the same; through its white arches could be seen the green, sparkling, tumultuous waters of the Drina, so that they seemed like some strange diadem in two colours which sparkled in the sun. — Ivo Andric

If the age of the Earth were a calendar year and today were a breath before midnight on New Year's Eve, we showed up a scant fifteen minutes ago, and all of recorded history has blinked by in the last sixty seconds. Luckily for us, our planet-mates
the fantastic meshwork of plants, animals, and microbes
have been patiently perfecting their wares since March, an incredible 3.8 billion years since the first bacteria ... After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival. — Janine Benyus

It was now clear that the little town of Sedan - with a population of less than eighteen thousand people - was one of the Germans' first targets. How long would it take them to overrun and consume the town? How long would it be until everyone was dead or a prisoner of war? Once the Nazis controlled the bridges across the Meuse River, they could pour their forces into France, annihilate her armies, and march on Paris. How long would it take them to occupy and enslave the entire country? — Joel C. Rosenberg

Would you like to dance?" She smiled at him. "Look at the gym floor, Gabe. This is a father-daughter dance." "Yeah. Well, so what? Consider this my first dance with my daughter." At that, Nic went all gooey and some of her lingering doubts eased. Gabe Callahan was a good man. She tilted her head at him and asked, "What if she's a he?" "Well, I grew up going to dance halls in Texas, and believe me, it's never too early for a guy to learn to two-step." Gabe — Emily March

The Nazis' entrance upon the European stage did not, at first, alarm the British. After all, under the Versailles treaty,the size of the German army and navy was limited and the defeated country was forbidden to maintain air force. The wake-up bell began sounding only when, in March 1935, Hitler renounced the treaty and declared that his country would indeed rebuild its military. The following year, when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, Britons were unsettled to learn that his army was already three times the legal size ad that his air force, or Luftwaffe, would surpass their own. — Madeleine K. Albright

Before I was ordained, when I was working for the council, I thought of the first three months of the year as January, February, March. Now I think of them as Epiphany, Candlemas and Ash Wednesday. — Adam Smallbone

Then at last the opening music came again, with all the different instruments bunched together for each note like a hard, tight fist that socked at her heart. And the first part was over. This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms held tight around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. It might have been five minutes she listened or half the night. The second part was black-colored
a slow march. Not sad, but like the whole world was dead and black and there was no use thinking back how it was before. One of those horn kind of insturments played a sad and silver tune. Then the music rose up angry and with excitement underneath. And finally the black march again. — Carson McCullers

As we march toward the reality that, by 2050, no one racial or ethnic group will hold a proportional majority in this country, racial suicide paranoia abounds. And for the white racist legislators in the red states, nothing is more threatening than a majority-brown country; it strips them of their historic power. The prospect of being outnumbered is what enabled the Tea Party's mutiny of Congress in 2010 after the election of Barack Obama, America's first black president, allowing it to cripple the Republican establishment; render the first major-party female presidential candidate powerless; and enable the rise of the racist, nationalistic, and misogynistic Donald Trump The white people who are still in charge believe that if their women don't start having lots of babies they- the white patriarchs - are going to become obsolete. — Dr. Willie Parker

Black civil rights activists in the South were among the first to resist the draft. SNCC's Bob Moses joined historian Staughton Lynd and veteran pacifist Dave Dellinger to march in Washington against the war, and Life Magazine had a dramatic photo of the three of them walking abreast, being splattered with red paint by angry super-patriots. — Howard Zinn

It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men and he did not like it much. He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would no rather have stayed there in peace - — J.R.R. Tolkien

Alexander: "First we will send the frontovik into the streets with guns. When they are dead, we will send me, with a tank, like the one you've been making me. When I'm dead, all the barricades down, all the weapons and tanks gone, they will send you with a rock."
Tania: "And when I'm dead?"
Alexander: "You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?"
Tania: "That's not fair the French didn't fight"
Alexander: "The didn't fight Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose - — Paullina Simons

There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons. — Douglas Brinkley

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. — Tim O'Brien

March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of Prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy. — Emily Dickinson

I thought, how magical, the first glimspe of snow. By March I would be sick of it, but here in this November instant those tiny flakes swirled with the unspeakable purity of a divine gift. — Beatriz Williams

At the Council of Nicea in 325, all the Churches agreed that Easter, the Christian Passover, should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox. Because of different methods of calculating the 14th day of the month of Nisan, the date of Easter in the Western and Eastern Churches is not always the same. For this reason, the Churches are currently seeking an agreement in order once again to celebrate the day of the Lord's Resurrection on a common date." The earliest date that Easter can fall on is March 22. That hasn't happened since 1818, and won't happen again until 2285. The latest possible date for Easter is April 25. — Gus Lloyd

This was the march of civilization. First there is barbarism, no schools at all, all learning done at home, chaotically if at all. Then there is civil society, democracy, the right to free schooling for every child. Close on the heels of the right to free education is the right to pull these children out of the free schools and put them in private-schools - we have a right to pay for what is provided for free! And this is followed, inevitably and petulantly, by the right to pull them from school altogether, to do it yourself at home, everything coming full circle. — Dave Eggers

For years the first of May was the day all leases expired, and on that day mass migrations would take place, with families lugging eiderdowns and ancestral portraits through the streets, as if in parody of the march of the wagon trains. — Luc Sante

The weather was fine, the valleys literally covered with buffaloe, and everything seemed to promise a safe and speedy movement to the first grove of timber on my route, supposed to be about ten days' march. — William Henry Ashley

Again, we just blew our chance, it's that simple. I'll be the first one to take the blame. Everyone's a part of it. To the credit of our players, they put us in position after being .500 for the better part of the season, but we told them going into the Dayton game this team will be remembered positively or negatively by what happened in March. There will be some negative memories about this season because of what happened in March. That's the cold, hard reality. — Brad Soderberg

March 1774 by declaring the port of Boston closed until the East India Company had been compensated for its losses. This was the first of the so-called Coercive Acts - a series of laws passed in 1774 in which the British attempted to assert their authority over the colonies but instead succeeded only in enraging the colonists further and ultimately prompted the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775. It is tempting to wonder whether a government less influenced by the interests of the company might have simply shrugged off the tea parties or come to some compromise with the colonists. — Tom Standage

I ran my first race the end of March, 1976. And less than four months later I was Olympic champion. But I had the background. It's not like I just ran one day and all of a sudden became a champion. It was a lot of work. — Edwin Moses

The Men of the Ordeal do not march to save the World, Proyas
at least not first and foremost. They march to save their wives and children. Their tribes and their nations. If they learn that the world, their world, slips into ruin behind them, that their wives and daughters may perish for want of their shields, their swords, the Host of Hosts would melt about the edges, then collapse. — R. Scott Bakker

In the first place, good people are rarely suspicious; they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic conclusion as the correct one, and let matters rest there. Then, too, the normal are inclined to view the multiple killer as the as the one who's as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get. He paused and then said that these monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters: they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself - just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be than the imperfect original from which it had been modeled. — William March

Two epidemics swept the world in 1918. One was Spanish influenza, the first recorded outbreak of which was at a Kansas army base in March 1918. As if to mock the efforts of men to kill one another, the virus spread rapidly across the United States and then crossed to Europe on the crowded American troopships. — Niall Ferguson

In reference to the search for Lincoln's killers as it took to the Maryland swamps:
The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous. First, the troops assemble on the edge of bogs with names like Allen's Creek, Scrub Swamp, and Atchall's Swamp, standing at loose attention in the shade of a thick forest of beech, dogwood, and gum trees. Then they form two lines and march straight forward, from one side to the other. As absurd as it seems to the soldiers, marching headlong into cold mucky water, there is no other way of locating Booth and Herold. Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their painstaking weeklong search for the killers. — Bill O'Reilly

To win countrywide victory is only the first step in a long march of ten thousand li ... The Chinese revolution is great, but the road after the revolution will be longer, the work greater and more arduous. This must be made clear now in the Party. The comrades must be helped to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. The comrades must be helped to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle. — Mao Zedong

Give me liberty or give me death.
[From a speech given at Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry.] — Patrick Henry

Her most unusual assignation was a quick visit with Fred Darsey, a young man recently escaped from Milledgeville State Hospital, where he was committed by his parents during a troubled adolescence. Darsey first caught her interest with a blind letter, in March, from the mental institution, revealing his passion for bird-watching. She was startled when her reply was returned and the envelope marked "eloped." She sympathized, when Darsey wrote her again from New York City, "When you have a friend there you feel as if you are there yourself, so you see I feel as if I have escaped too." Carver helped arrange the date, which Flannery kept secret from Regina, in Bryant Park, at the rear of the New York Public Library, with the pen pal she had never met. "I just love to sit and look at the people in New York, or anywhere," she told him, "even in Milledgeville." Flannery wound up her trip north spending the — Brad Gooch

Beneath the St. Lucian sun, with a wisp of a tropical breeze, he kissed her with all the pent-up desire that had built within him since he'd first laid eyes on her. She parted her satiny, supple lips and he deepened their kiss, each sweep of her tongue sending a new wave of pleasure pulsing through him. — Tracy March

True greatness, first of all, is a thing of the heart. It is alive with robust and generous sympathies. It is neither behind its age nor too far before it. It is up with its age, and ahead of it only just so far as to be able to lead its march. It cannot slumber, for activity is a necessity of its existence. It is no reservoir, but a fountain. — Roswell Dwight Hitchcock

I was very ambitious. It all started because my first boyfriend dumped me when I was 14. I'd always wanted to be a model and thought, 'Right, he's going to see me everywhere.' I was relentless in my pursuit of modeling. It was revenge. — Jane March

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things. — Rush Limbaugh

When she smiles, it feels like the first warm day of March
after an eternity of snow, when you suddenly remember how summer feels on the backs of your bare calves & in the part of your hair. — Jodi Picoult

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982. — J. A. Jance

Love life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly. — Gretel Ehrlich

He was the first to admit that he had been singularly ill-qualified for all his previous jobs. Just a few months earlier, he had accepted the editorship of Gardening Magazine. 'Nobody could know less about gardening than me,' he said. But it didn't stop him dispensing advice for his readers. 'I would solemnly give them my views on whether it were better to plant globe artichokes in September or March.'18 Now, at last, he had fallen into a job for which he was extremely well qualified, one in which the only seeds to be planted were those of wholescale destruction. — Giles Milton

But I've kept first of March as my birthday as I like to tease Zed about dating an older woman. And my parents wouldn't understand if I told them about the soulfinder bond and tried to change it."
"They don't know?"
"Well, I think they've picked up that there's something special between Zed and me but I'm not sure how I'd even start to explain to non-savants. I was exactly overjoyed when Zed filled me in about it all the first time."
"What did you do?"
"Thumped him with a shopping bag and told him he was a jerk."
"Ouch. — Joss Stirling

As soon as we had the music arranged on our stands, Conductor Li tapped his baton on the lectern and called us to attention. "Quiet please, comrades! And as we play just think of the Long March," he said. "I will be at the front, like Chairman Mao. I will beat the time. Try to keep up. If you get lost, skip a few pages. Hopefully, the rest of us will pass your way eventually... The first movement sounded like nothing less than a full-scale military retreat. We were ambushed by missing pages of score, by an impulsive feint by the cellists and double basses, and by a flautist who turned two pages rather than one and played along happily in no man's land for a dozen or so bars until he was rapped on the head with the end of a clarinet (pg 325) — John Sinclair

Well, first of all, I was asked by Ross Perot on a telephone call in March of 1992 if, since he had committed on the Larry King Show to becoming a candidate for president, to get on all 50 ballots. — James Stockdale

Ignominy is universally acknowledged to be a worse punishment than death . . . It would seem strange that ignominy should ever have been adopted as a milder punishment than death, did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth up on any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error. - BENJAMIN RUSH, "AN ENQUIRY INTO THE EFFECTS OF PUBLIC PUNISHMENTS UPON CRIMINALS, AND UPON SOCIETY," MARCH 9, 1787 — Jon Ronson

So we come together before you on this day, March 30th, 2015, with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be another one of those moments in time, a moment that will forever change the course of music history. For today we announce of Tidal, the first ever artist-owned, global music and entertainment platform. — Alicia Keys

Here I first mounted a little Highland steed; and if there had been many spectators, should have been somewhat ashamed of my figure in the march. The horses of the Islands, as of other barren countries, are very low: they are indeed musculous and strong, beyond what their size gives reason for expecting; but a bulky man upon one of their backs makes a very disproportionate appearance. — Samuel Johnson

It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don't listen to that scream - and if we don't respond to it - we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us - or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.
[from a Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; March 17, 1970] — Rod Serling

A rush of sensation pulsed through her, lingering long after his touch. The towel quickly fell free. He caught it before it slipped to the ground and slung it over his shoulder. "Consider this your first time," he said, his tone low and sultry.
Good Lord ... Paige could hardly blink. If this was any indication of the doc's bedside manner, she could only hope for long-term, intensive treatment. — Tracy March

It took Read some twenty years of searching to nail the matter down, but thanks to his efforts we now know that OK first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post on 23 March 1839, as a jocular abbreviation for 'Oll Korrect'. At — Bill Bryson

I started to work at the Colony in March 1958. I remember my first day because the telephone started to ring, and it was Sinatra, three for lunch, his usual table; Onassis, two for lunch, usual table; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Leland Hayward, Truman Capote, all wanting their usual tables. — Sirio Maccioni

What religious Americans might have been slow to realize is that the ACLU's long march through the institutions of America has culminated at the door of Obama's White House. Behind that door stands the one we have "been waiting for," as liberals chanted about Obama in 2008. Obama is the fulfillment of the ACLU's messianic secularist hopes. No president has done more to empty the public square of Christians than Barack Obama. To the delight of secularists, Obama has been stacking the federal courts with ACLU-style judges who read the First Amendment through an ahistorical and atheistic prism, or as they like to call it, the "living Constitution," which is nothing more than a euphemism for whatever they think the Constitution should mean in our supposedly enlightened times. — Phyllis Schlafly

First, I worry about climate change. It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible. — William J. Clinton

Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization. — William H. Prescott

And seeing all the Hellespont covered over with the ships and all the shores and the plains of Abydos full of men, then Xerxes pronounced himself a happy man, and after that he fell to weeping. Artabanus, his uncle, therefore perceiving him the same who at first boldly declared his opinion advising Xerxes not to march against Hellas-this man, I say, having observed that Xerxes wept, asked as follows: 'O king, how far different from one another are the things which thou hast done now and a short while before now! for having pronounced thyself a happy man, thou art now shedding tears.' He said : 'Yea, for after I had reckoned up, it came into my mind to feel pity at the thought how brief was the whole life of man, seeing that of these multitudes not one will be alive when a hundred years have gone by. — H.G.Wells

Silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much. The Hatter was the first to break the silence. 'What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear. Alice considered a little, and then said 'The fourth.' 'Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. 'I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March Hare. 'It was the best butter, — Lewis Carroll

On March 30, 1890, an officer of the First National Bank placed a warning in the help-wanted section of the Chicago Tribune, to inform female stenographers of "our growing conviction that no thoroughly honorable business-man who is this side of dotage ever advertises for a lady stenographer who is a blonde, is good-looking, is quite alone in the city, or will transmit her photograph. All such advertisements upon their face bear the marks of vulgarity, nor do we regard it safe for any lady to answer such unseemly utterances." The — Erik Larson

Glenn Hammond Curtiss was a bicycle enthusiast before he started building motorcycles. Although he only attended grammar school to the 8th grade, his interests motivated him to move on to greater things. In 1904, as a self-taught engineer, he began to manufacture engines for airships. During this time, Curtiss became known for having won a number of international air races and for making the first long-distance flight in the United States. On September 30, 1907, Curtiss was invited to join a non-profit pioneering research program named the "Aerial Experimental Association," founded under the leadership of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, to develop flying machines. The organization was established having a fixed time period, which ended in March of 1909. During this time, the members produced several different aircraft in a cooperative, rather than a competitive, spirit. — Hank Bracker

Fast-forward to March 17, 2014, when the Los Angeles Times was the first news company to break a story about a nearby earthquake. Their edge? The article was written entirely by a robot - a computer program that scans streams of data, like that from the U.S. Geological Survey, and puts together short pieces faster than any newsroom chain of command could. This program earned the paper a few minutes of lead time at most, but today, those minutes are critical. — Stanley McChrystal

In the first manifesto that we launched on the 8th of March, 1910, from the stage of the Chiarella Theater in Turin,1 we expressed our deep-rooted disgust with, our proud contempt for, and our happy rebellion against vulgarity, mediocrity, the fanatical and snobbish worship of all that is old, attitudes which are suffocating Art in our Country. — Umberto Boccioni

Though every dead man is a reduction of their number, the thousand POWs who first left Changi as Evans' J Force - an assortment of Tasmanians and West Australians surrendered in Java, South Australians surrendered at Singapore, survivors of the sinking of the destroyer, HMAS Newcastle, a few Vics and New South Welshmen from other military misadventures, and some RAAF airmen - remain Evans' J Force. That's what they were when they arrived and that's what they will be when they leave, Evans' J Force, one-thousand souls strong, no matter, if at the end, only one man remains to march out of this camp. They are survivors of grim, pinched decades who have been left with this irreducible minimum: a belief in each other, a belief that they cleave to only more strongly when death comes. For if the living let go of the dead, their own life ceases to matter. The fact of their own survival somehow demands that they are one, now and forever. — Richard Flanagan

They fought their first action in March of 1775. Embarked on eight small ships, they sailed to the Bahamas and captured a British fort near Nassau, seizing gunpowder and supplies. Later, during the Revolutionary War, Marines fought several engagements in their distinctive green coats, such as helping George Washington to cross the Delaware River, and assisting John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard to capture the British frigate Serapis during their famous sea fight. — Tom Clancy

Nicely, thank you, Mr. Laurence. But I am not Miss March, I'm only Jo," returned the young lady.
"I'm not Mr. Laurence, I'm only Laurie."
"Laurie Laurence, what an odd name."
"My first name is Theodore, but I don't like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead."
"I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?"
"I thrashed 'em."
"I can't thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear it." And Jo resigned herself with a sigh — Louisa May Alcott

We advance in years somewhat in the manner of an invading army in a barren land; the age that we have reached, as the saying goes, we but hold with an outpost, and still keep open communications with the extreme rear and first beginnings of the march. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Let a thing be but a sort of punctual surprise, like the first cache of violets in March, let it be delicate, painted and gratuitous, hinting that the Creator is solely occupied with aesthetic considerations, and combines disparate objects simply because they look so well together, and that thing will admirably fill the role of a flower. — Hope Mirrlees

maybe she should take out a book and read, for it don't make no sense to just lean against the shop front, doing nothing, and she start to search in her bag, when she hear Pansy shout, "Lord Jesus! Oh God, help me!" Pansy bawling for help louder and louder, so Grace get frighten. She drop her schoolbag, run quick into the shop, and push on the door to the back room with all her might. After a couple tries, it fly open. Staring at her are one pair of feet with brown socks, one pair of feet with no socks, four legs with no covering and Mortimer's bare bottom rising and falling with a motion that remind her of when he was using the saw. Grace look, turn right around, march out, pick up her school bag, and start walking home. First she is furious with Pansy, but then she start to laugh. Mortimer have a nice body, but he is short. Pansy is a good-sized girl. Grace remember Gramps say, "Tiny insects pollinate sizeable flowers, — Pamela Mordecai

BY THE END OF MY JUNIOR YEAR, SCHOOL SHOOTINGS WERE MAKING their way into the news. The first one I heard about was in 1997, when Luke Woodham killed two students and wounded seven others in Pearl, Mississippi. Two months later, in West Paducah, Kentucky, Michael Carneal killed three students at a high school prayer service. In March of 1998, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Arkansas - one aged thirteen, the other eleven - set off a fire alarm to make their fellow students run outside, then opened fire from the trees. They killed four students and a teacher. Finally, Kip Kinkel went on a rampage in Springfield, Oregon in May of 1998. He murdered both of his parents at home, then went to school, killed two students, and wounded twenty-two others. — Brooks Brown

In March 1861 alone - Lincoln's first month in office - the U.S. Senate would receive for its advice and consent some sixty pages of names submitted for civilian and military appointments ranging from secretary of state to surveyor-general of Minnesota. — Harold Holzer

By the beginning of March, K Company, 333rd Regiment, had reached the Rhine. The men settled down in the village of Krefeld to await Montgomery's Operation Plunder, the crossing of the river; Monty was planning the operation with as much care as he had put into Operation Overlord, so the pause was a long one. By some miracle, the men found an undamaged high-rise apartment building in which everything worked - electricity, hot water, flush toilets, and telephones with dial tones. The had their first hot baths in four months. They found cigars and bottles go cognac. Pvt. Ray Bocarski, fluent in German, lit up, sat down in an easy chair, got a befuddled German operator on the phone, and talked his way through to a military headquarters in Berlin. He told the German officer he could expect K Company within the week. — Stephen E. Ambrose

At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one's eyes to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the second. — Leo Tolstoy

Around the same time, the president-elect opened an equally chilling letter from yet another anonymous enemy in Washington: "Caesar had his Brutus. Charles the First his Cromwell. And the President may profit by their example." The letter was signed "Vindex" - the name of the first Roman governor to rebel against Nero - "one of a sworn band of 10, who have resolved to shoot you in the inaugural procession on the 4th of March, 1861. — Harold Holzer

You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it ... I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his [Jesus'] divinity; tho' it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.
[Letter to Ezra Stiles, March 9, 1790] — Benjamin Franklin

Tis one thing, brother Shandy, for a soldier to hazard his own life - to leap first down into the trench, where he is sure to be cut in pieces: - 'Tis one thing, from public spirit and a thirst of glory, to enter the breach the first man, - To stand in the foremost rank, and march bravely on with drums and trumpets, and colours flying about his ears: - 'Tis one thing, I say, brother Shandy, to do this, - and 'tis another thing to reflect on the miseries of war; - to view the desolations of whole countries, and consider the intolerable fatigues and hardships which the soldier himself, the instrument who works them, is forced (for sixpence a day, if he can get it) to undergo. — Anonymous