Stonehenge

Quotes

I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, "Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!" Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.
- Bill Bryson, in Notes from a Small Island (1995)

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.
- Edmund Burke, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) §12 : Difficulty

Much of what has been written about Stonehenge is derivative, second-rate or plain wrong.
- Christopher Chippindale, in Stonehenge Complete (1983)

Hello, Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe!
- Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor, in "The Pandorica Opens" episode of the Doctor Who television series.

Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves-or desires.
- Jacquetta Hawkes, in God in the Machine, Antiquity 41 (1967), p. 174

I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape. I reckon that Stonehenge was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.
- Terry Pratchett, at alt.fan.pratchett (8 June 1997)

Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge, where a man's a man
And the children dance to the pipes of Pan.
- Spinal Tap, in This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity; which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd boys, who are always idling round that place.
- Reverend Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (3rd ed.). Allan Bell & Company. 1834. p. 53. (with notes by Captain Thomas Brown)

Quotes

I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, "Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!" Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.
- Bill Bryson, in Notes from a Small Island (1995)

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to effect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.
- Edmund Burke, in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) §12 : Difficulty

Much of what has been written about Stonehenge is derivative, second-rate or plain wrong.
- Christopher Chippindale, in Stonehenge Complete (1983)

Hello, Stonehenge! Who takes the Pandorica, takes the universe!
- Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor, in "The Pandorica Opens" episode of the Doctor Who television series.

Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves-or desires.
- Jacquetta Hawkes, in God in the Machine, Antiquity 41 (1967), p. 174

I don't like the place at all. It's all wrong. An imposition on the Landscape. I reckon that Stonehenge was build by the contemporary equivalent of Microsoft, whereas Avebury was definitely an Apple circle.
- Terry Pratchett, at alt.fan.pratchett (8 June 1997)

Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge, where a man's a man
And the children dance to the pipes of Pan.
- Spinal Tap, in This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

Another very unlikely spot is made use of by daws as a place to breed in, and that is Stonehenge. These birds deposit their nests in the interstices between the upright and the impost stones of that amazing work of antiquity; which circumstance alone speaks the prodigious height of the upright stones, that they should be tall enough to secure those nests from the annoyance of shepherd boys, who are always idling round that place.
- Reverend Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (3rd ed.). Allan Bell & Company. 1834. p. 53. (with notes by Captain Thomas Brown)

Quotes