Mark Twain - Ringo Starr - Edmund Clerihew Bentley - Terry Pratchett - Edmund Burke - Geradus Mercator - Charles Lapworth -
God created war so that Americans would learn geography. Mark Twain, attributions & variations
Reporter: How do you find America?
Ringo Starr: Turn left at Greenland. Beatles’ first US tour 1964
The Art of Biography
Is different from Geography.
Geography is about Maps,
But Biography is about Chaps. Edmund Clerihew Bentley, 1875-1956
Geography is just physics slowed down, with a couple of trees stuck in it. Terry Pratchett
Geography is an earthly subject, but a heavenly science. Edmund Burke
Since my youth geography has been for me the primary object of study. When I was engaged in it, having applied the considerations of the natural and geometric sciences, I liked, little by little, not only the description of the earth, but also the structure of the whole machinery of the world, whose numerous elements are not known by anyone to date. Gerardus Mercator, Introduction to Ptolemy’s Geography, 1578
All that comes above the surface [of the globe] lies within the province of Geography; all that comes below that surface lies inside the realm of Geology. The surface of the earth is that which, so to speak, divides them and at the same time ‘binds them together in indissoluble union’. We may, perhaps, put the case metaphorically. The relationships of the two are rather like that of man and wife. Geography, like a prudent woman, has followed the sage advice of Shakespeare and taken unto her ‘an elder than herself’; but she does not trespass on the domain of her consort, nor could she possibly maintain the respect of her children were she to flaunt before the world the assertion that she is ‘a woman with a past’. Charles Lapworth, Proceedings of the Geological Society of London 1903 59: lxx