Words mean what they’re generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren’s St. Paul’s Cathedral for the first time, he called it “awful, pompous, and artificial.” Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious.
– S. M. Stirling
Grab my RSS feed:
Recent Comments:
Bora Zivkovic on Morning at Triton Angie Lindsay Ma on Morning at Triton Linda chamblee on Morning at Triton Jekyll » Blog… on The Big Announcement, this tim… Mike H on The Big Announcement, this tim… -
Buy the 2009 Science Blogging Anthology:
Buy the 2008 Science Blogging Anthology:
Buy the 2007 Science Blogging Anthology:
Buy the 2006 Science Blogging Anthology:
CC licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.PayPal
Sitemeter
A Blog Around The Clock 
An earlier version of this quote forms the first and last paragraphs of Poul Anderson’s “A Tragedy of Errors”.
“Once in ancient days, the then King of England told Sir Christopher Wren, whose name is yet remembered, that the new Cathedral of St. Paul which he had designed was ‘awful, pompous, and artificial.’ Kings have seldom been noted for perspicacity.
…
In the case of the king and Sir Christopher a compliment was intended. A later era would have used the words “awe-inspiring, stated, and ingeniously contrived.”