Acrobats (detail), Japanese handscroll, nineteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Henry J. Bernheim, 1945.
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Miscellany
A study of U.S. Supreme Court oral transcripts from 2004 to 2005 tabulated every instance the court reporter described a justice’s remarks provoking laughter. It found that Antonin Scalia had caused seventy-seven such episodes, while Clarence Thomas had caused zero.
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
