Quotations concerning pigs,
and pig flight?
The aerodynamic potential of pigs has long been debated. Is that plump body a proper fuselage? Can a curvilinear tail assembly function as a rudder? Will cloven appendages withstand the stress of landing? And, eh… Just where are the wings? Perhaps only the Walrus knows.
“Owl,” said Pooh, “Could you fly up to the letter-box with Piglet on your back?”
“No,” said Piglet quickly, “He couldn’t.”
Owl explained to Pooh about the necessary Dorsal Muscles. Piglet hurriedly added that he had been getting much bigger lately, “so it’s no good thinking about it.”
A.A. Milne (1882-1956)
The House at Pooh Corner (1928).
RABBLE, n.: in a republic, those who exercise a supreme authority tempered by fraudulent elections. The rabble is like the sacred Simurgh, of Arabian fable — omnipotent on condition that it do nothing. (The word is Aristocratese, and has no exact equivalent in our tongue, but means, as nearly as may be, “soaring swine.”).
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
U.S. writer and journalist. The Devil’s Dictionary (1906).
Pigs flie in the ayre with their tails forward…
John Withals (d. c. 1555)
British lexicographer. A Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners (1553).
Don’t discount flying pigs before you have a good air defense.
Attributed to: jvh@clinet.FI (ca.1996).
Pigs might fly, but they are very unlikely birds.
a popular British euphemism as early as the 1620s.
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax,
Of cabbages and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot,
And whether pigs have wings.”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)
pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a British mathematician, writer and a member of the faculty of mathematics at the University of Oxford. The Owl and the Pussycat (1871).
The first pig to fly in an aeroplane was taken up for a joyride in a biplane by Lord Brabazon, holder of the first pilot license in Britain.
The TIMES, London (1909).
Pork — the other white meat. Leaner. Healthier.
Were going where no pig has gone before, come
along. Take that one small step… Buy pork!
National Pork Producers Council
an American Trade Organization, (c. 1997).
I have myself a poetical enthusiasm for pigs, and the paradise of my fancy is one where pigs have wings. But it is only men, especially wise men, who discuss whether pigs can fly; we have no particular proof that pigs ever discuss it.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
British author and critic. Fancies Versus Facts (1923).
“Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly.”
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
English writer and mathematician. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
If you are sweating too much before a flight, you surely haven’t asked enough questions. If you are not sweating just a little during the flight, you may not have been attentive enough. And, if you are not sweating out the answers with all the experts you can think of after the flight, you may never find that very beautiful pearl in all that pig litter.
Corwin H. “Corky” Meyer (b. 1920)
Grumman Aircraft test pilot during WWII.
I’m sure that the airlines would allow first-class passengers to travel to Europe or California in the company of their pigs, and I like to imagine the sight of the pairs of differently shaped heads when seen from the rear of the cabin.
Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
U.S. editor and writer. “A Man and His Pig” from 30 Satires (2003).
