“If all the earth were paper white
And all the sea were ink
‘Twere not enough for me to write
As my poor heart doth think.”
(John Lyly, 1554 – 1606)
John Lentell
21st March, 1969
Month: October 2010
Friday’s Piece
“Women, then, are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid, reasoning good-sense, I never knew in my life one that had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together.”
(From Letters to His Son by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694 – 1773)
John Lentell
20th March, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“Labour without joy is base. Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour is base. Joy without labour is base.”
(John Ruskin, 1819 – 1900)
John Lentell
19th March, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
In the Report of the Constitutional Commission 1968 appeared the following:
“We therefore recommend that the new constitution should contain a brief, factual preamble and, by a majority of four to one, that it should include an acknowledgement of the authority and guidance of Almighty God.” (Para 603)
One Commissioner thought that some would regard a reference to God in the Constitution as being out of place.
This is very interesting and it is perhaps astonishing that so little attention was focussed upon the questions arising. I believe in some sort of higher authority but I would not be so bold as to say that Almighty God is an indisputable fact!
John Lentell
18th March, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
A restaurant owner with plenty of advertising ideas and little money for advertising purchased the largest fish bowl he could find, filled it with water and put it in his window, with a sign reading:
“This bowl is filled with invisible Paraguayan goldfish.”
It required two policemen to keep the pavements in front of the window cleared.
John Lentell
17th March, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together”
(From The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot, 1888 – 1965)
Gour Lentell
16th March, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“Die Politik ist keine exakte Wissenschaft.”
Politics is not an exact science.
(Otto von Bismarck, 1815 – 1898)
John Lentell
15th March, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“What we want are the impractical people who are beyond the moment, and think beyond the day. Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods are prepared.”
(Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900)
John Lentell
14th March, 1969
Friday’s Piece
Extract from ‘NEWSFRONT’ – 10th January, 1964:
Q. What would be the main repercussion, apart from belt-tightening, if we declared our independence?
A. I don’t think there will be any belt-tightening, when we are independent – the days of belt-tightening will be over. That’s for sure. As far as the City of London is concerned, it might be a three days wonder. For that reason I think that a Friday afternoon would be a good time. By Monday morning all the excitement (if any) would be over.
John Lentell
13th March, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“One of the worst sins of public life, I am sure, is to lead ordinary people to expect something which may not be possible.”
(Hugh Foot, Baron Caradon, 1907 – 1990)
John Lentell
12th March, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
“Your honesty is not to be based on either religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.”
(From Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne by John Ruskin, 1819 – 1900)
John Lentell
11th March, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence also, more alive to tenderness.”
(From Character of the Happy Warrior by William Wordsworth, 1770 – 1850)
John Lentell
10th March, 1969
Monday’s Piece
” ‘Tis a thing impossible, to frame
Conceptions equal to the soul’s desires;
And the most difficult of tasks to keep
Heights which the soul is competent to gain.”
(William Wordsworth, 1770 – 1850)
John Lentell
9th March, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“Thus let your stream o’erflow your springs,
Till eyes and tears be the same things;
And each the other’s difference bears,
These weeping eyes, those seeing tears.”
(From Eyes and Tears by Andrew Marvell, 1621 – 1678)
John Lentell
8th March, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”
(From The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith, 1730 – 1774)
John Lentell
7th March, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”
(Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1865)
John Lentell
6th March, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“If the heart of a man is deprest with cares,
The mist is dispell’d when a woman appears.”
(John Gay, 1685 – 1732)
John Lentell
5th March, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
What breed of man, at this critical hour, could lead us out of crisis and conflict to harmony and greatness? Unhesitatingly I take as an example Lord (‘Boom’) Trenchard. Born 1873, died 1956 and buried aright in Westminster Abbey.
“A giant among men, physically and morally, a legendary leader, with an uncanny gift for picking men, he was that almost unique combination, the man of vision and the man of decision.”
“A giant in his own right, he kept faith with his high and lonely destiny.”
He has for long been my hero.
John Lentell
4th March, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“Be unjust, and you hand to nationalism a creed and a cause worth dying for: be just, and you deprive it of ammunition, and you destroy it. Justice is the foundation upon which the greatness of our nation must be established; for without it, you can satisfy the greed, but you can never win the hearts of men – and the greatness of a nation lies, in the last analysis, in the hearts of its people.”
(From ‘Rhodesia Acuses’ by A.J.A. Peck)
John Lentell
3rd February, 1969
Monday’s Piece
The ‘man in the street’ might be forgiven his complacency. How can he be expected to wake up to the facts of life when the sort of facts upon which he thrives, or otherwise, are not revealed. But that the intelligent ones in higher echelons are taking this constitutional higgledy-piggledy lying down is beyond my comprehension. As Isaiah said – “Shudder, you complacent ones”.
John Lentell
2nd March, 1969
