Robert Bakker
Robert Bakker

Duckbills were supposedly croc-style swimmers, moving by strong, easy, side-to-side flexures of their tail. Therefore, the optimal design would feature vertical tail spines. But duckbill spines all slanted strongly backward, exactly as in land-living lizards, not in swimmers.
Another problem in the duckbill's swimming equipment lies in the profile of the tail. The deepest part of the croc's

tail is close to the end, because the end swings through a wider arc than does the base in moving side to side. Thus the tail is deepest where it can do the most good in pushing against the water. All powerful tail-scullers have such deep tail ends. But duckbill tails were deepest at the hips and become progressively narrower from top-to-bottom toward the tip - another caudal feature nearly

totally maladapted for its primary function.

Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer
Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer

Even in our times, despite those who deny God, earth is very close to Heaven.

Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin

In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come, it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but surely it shows that the only progress that can be obtained in this country is by those two bodies of men—so similar in their strength and so similar in their weaknesses—learning to understand each other, and not to fight each other…we are moving forward

rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the question is: What is that newer going to be? No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this, however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see…it has got to be a form of pretty close partnership, however that is going to be arrived at. And it will not be a partnership the terms of which will be laid down, at any

rate not yet, in Acts of Parliament, or from this party or that. It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work, and it is little help that they can get really either from politicians or from intellectuals. There are few men fitted to judge, to settle and to arrange the problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and employed. There are few men qualified to

intervene who have not themselves been right through the mill. I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both sides, men who have been right through the mill, who themselves know exactly the points where the shoe pinches, who know exactly what can be conceded and what cannot, who can make their reasons plain; and I hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their

respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on collisions.

Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin

Bewdley, as most of you know was in distant times a sanctuary town to which a man, whatever his sins, might flee and be safe from justice. So, whatever the rude waves of the outside world buffet me with more than usual vigour, I have only to remember that in Bewdley, there is sanctuary even for a Prime Minister…I have never failed to find in my own country understanding, sympathy and support,

and even when life seems to most difficult and the fences in front unclimbable, I can turn back in memory and recollection to this peaceful spot by the side of the river where I first drew breath and in the memory of which I am able to draw strength. There could have been no more typical English surroundings in which to cherish the earliest memories. I remember as a child, looking up the river

from the bridge into that mysterious and romantic land of Shropshire, so close to us, from which my people came only three generations before and watching the smoke of the train running along the little railway through places bearing names like Wyre Forest, Cleobury Mortimer, Neen Sollars and Tenbury - names steeped in romance and redolent of the springtime of an England long ago passed but whose

heritage is ours.

Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin

The politician is much nearer in type to the barrister and advocate than to the scientist…The advocate and the politician are more interested in persuasion than in proof. They have a client or a policy to defend. The political audience is not dishonest in itself, nor does it desire or approve dishonesty or misrepresentation in others, but it is an audience only imperfectly prepared to follow a

close argument, and the speaker wishes to make a favourable impression, to secure support for a policy. It is easy to see how this may lead to the depreciation of the verbal currency and to the circulation of promises which cannot be cashed.

Devendra Banhart
Devendra Banhart

Cripple crow say something for our grieving, where do we go once we start leaving. Well close that wound or else keep on bleeding and change your tune, it's got no meaning.

Iain Banks
Iain Banks

Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly,

and we die more completely, too.

Iain Banks
Iain Banks

They spend time. That’s just it. They spend time traveling. The time weighs heavily on them because they lack any context, any valid framework for their lives. They persist in hoping that something they think they’ll find in the place they’re heading for will somehow provide them with a fulfilment they feel certain they deserve and yet have never come close to experiencing.

Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse

We go back home. We wait and then have dinner. We live these few hours. And we see ourselves alone in the house, facing each other, as never we saw ourselves, and we do not know what to do! It is a real drama of vacancy which is breaking loose. We are living together; our movements are in harmony, they touch and mingle. But all of it is empty. We do not long for each other, we can no longer expect

each other, we have no dreams, we are not happy. It is a sort of imitation of life by phantoms, by beings who, in the distance are beings, but close by — so close — are phantoms!

Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse

I have given notice. I am going away to-morrow evening, I with my tremendous memory. Whatever may happen, whatever tragedies may be reserved for me in the future, my thought will not be graver or more important when I shall have lived my life with all its weight.
But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs any more. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with

smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.