“How confused can you get?
Think of the man standing in a pasture holding a reop in his hands and saying to himself: ‘I don’t know if I lost a horse or found a rope?'”
John Lentell
3rd June, 1969
Month: January 2011
Monday’s Piece
“People vote their resentment, not their appreciation. The average man does not vote for anything, but against something.”
(H.H. Munro, 1870 – 1916)
John Lentell
2nd June, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“It appears that three men went for a long walk, a doctor, an architect and a politician, and they fell to discussing as to whose profession was the oldest. Said the doctor: “My profession is the oldest since God created Eve out of Adam’s rib and in fact, performed a surgical operation.” Said the architect: “My profession is still older, since God, just like any architect, in creating the world, made it out of chaos.” “Ah,” joined in the politician, “but who made the chaos?”
(Speakers Encyclopaedia – Jacob M. Braude)
John Lentell
1st June, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“But when we in our viciousness grow hard –
O misery on’t! – the wise gods seel our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgements; make us
Adore our errors; laugh at’s, while we strut
To our confusion.”
(From Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616)
John Lentell
31st may, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“The smith has always a spark in his throat.”
(“And they often take pains to quench it, but to no purpose.”)
John Lentell
30th May, 1969
Note: this saying is an old English metaphor and there’s a reference to one John Hogg, a blacksmith working in a forge with an ever burning spark which always required quenching. This “piece” was no doubt a cryptic reference to Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia at the time.
Thursday’s Piece
“Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.”
(Edmund Burke, 1729 – 1797)
John Lentell
29th May, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
“A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.”
(Speech in the House of Representatives by Fisher Ames, 1758 – 1808)
John Lentell
28th May, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“Those who see the need of new policies must support new men, not the same men under a new label.”
(A letter to the Electors of Chelsea by Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970)
John Lentell
27th May, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.”
(Daniel O’Connell, 1775 – 1847)
John Lentell
26th May, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“A man went for treatment and found himself in a room with two doors; one marked Chronic, the other Acute. He knew his condition was acute so he went through that door and found himself in a room with two doors, one marked Above the Waist, the other Below the Waist. He entered the former and found himself in a room with two doors; one was marked Republican, the other Democrat. He went through the one marked Republican and found himself out on the street.”
(Speakers Encyclopaedia – Jacob M. Braude)
John Lentell
25th May, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“MUGWUMP: a man who sits on a fence with his mug on one side and his wump on the other.”
(From They Also Ran by Irving Stone, 1903 – 1989)
John Lentell
24th May, 1969
Lentell Soup 