BRAIN TEASERS DEPT.

The Founding Fathers believed it was important to keep our passions at bay, and I agree. My seething passions these days are mostly Sputtering Rage, Blank Despair, quite a bit of Cynicism; awful Cosmic Guilt; the real devil, Drunken Folly; Futile Disappointment; Infantile Loneliness; and a background of sheer thwarted middle-aged masculine head-pounding Aggression.

I know we all feel that way. Each of us in our little boxes. I wonder if the cats hate us.

To fight the Onyourownavirus Blues, I’m posting some quotes, fun, historic, maybe familiar, but the idea is to cool the passions, by trying to guess Who Said It?

“Kill them all. God will know his own.” (“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius”)

— Command given, at the siege of Beziers in 1209, to slaughter all inhabitants because some were heretics. But Who Said It? Half a point if you can guess the normal occupation or profession, and a full point for the Order, of the part-time soldier who uttered it.

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. Purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. … enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

— Advice given to Pres. Hoover at the start of the Depression. This advice was followed. But Who Said It?

“I’m rrich! I’m RRICH!! RRich, d’ ye hearr, rrich, rrich, rrich, rrich, RRICH!!””

— The reaction of a world-famous tycoon, already a multi-millionaire, at the height of the Gilded Age, upon reading in the newspaper that a penny stock he recently picked, had just bubbled. Reportedly, the silk-topped tycoon accompanied his sing-song outburst by doing a most undignified little “Happy Dance” down Fifth Avenue. But Who Said It?

“It’s time the elephants started paying their own way.”

— U.S. policy on de-funding the international trade in ivory, as outlined in a press conference given by a U.S. Interior Secretary in the first Reagan cabinet. Nearly forgotten now, except by the View, who watched it uttered on the TV as a mere stripling….and I remember because it dislocated my jaw….but Who Said It?

“300 years of Romanovs! Why not 300 more?”

— Uttered, with disgust, to an eye-rolling spouse, in May of 1913, upon reading in the papers about the celebration of the tercentenary of Russia’s imperial dynasty. But Who Said It? Bonus point — the spouse’s name?

“The good Earth — we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”

— From a 2005 essay collection, ‘A Man Without A Country’ by a famous American novelist. Who Said It?

Answers below, Patient Reader, in the hash-tags. You could write to let me know how you did. If this kind of game succeeds in cheering anybody up, I might promote the whole Dept. If not — that’s your can, that’s the street; put it there, ya no-good bums….