Longitude - "Quotes"

Quotes through the ages from around the globe...

"When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales."

MARK TWAIN, Life on the Mississippi

Further Reading: Life on the Mississippi
by Mark Twain

• Buy it on-line from    or your local bookstore or library ISBN = 0899664695
  Available in a number of formats including audio-cassette

"Once on a Wednesday excursion when I was a little girl, my father bought me a beaded wire ball that I loved. At a touch, I could collapse the toy into a flat coil between my palms, or pop it open to make a hollow sphere. Rounded out, it resembled a tiny Earth, because its hinged wires traced the same pattern of intersecting circles that I had seen on the globe in my schoolroom-the thin black lines of latitude and longitude. The few colored beads slid along the wire paths haphazardly, like ships on the high seas."

"My father strode up Fifth Avenue to Rockefeller Center with me on his shoulders, and we stopped to stare at the statue of Atlas, carrying Heaven and Earth on his."

"The bronze orb that Atlas held aloft, like the wire toy in my hands, was a see-through world, defined by imaginary lines. The Equator. The Ecliptic. The Tropic of Cancer. The Tropic of Capricorn. The Arctic Circle. The prime meridian. Even then I could recognize, in the graph-paper grid imposed on the globe, a powerful symbol of all the real lands and waters on the planet."

DAVA SOBEL - Longitude

Further Reading:

Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
by Dana Sobel

• Buy it on-line from or your local bookstore or library ISBN = 0802713122 (Hard-back)

• Buy it on-line from    or your local bookstore or library ISBN = 0140258795 (Paper-back)

• Buy it on-line from    or your local bookstore or library ISBN = 1559273976 (Audio-cassette)

Other editions available - Cover may vary according to edition

Do you have a favourite Longitude Quote that you would like to see here?

Email the [email protected]