“Care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt; and also that some men do not suffer for offenses for which other are not even indicted.”
(Cicero, 106 BC – 43 BC)
John Lentell
4th December, 1969
Month: June 2011
Wednesday’s Piece
“You are charged” said the judge, “with beating up this government inspector. What have you to say?”
“Nothing,” replied the grocer, “I am guilty. I lost my head. All morning I held my temper while government agents inspected my scales, tested my butter, smelled my meat, graded my kerosene. In addition, your honour, I had just answered three federal questionnaires. The this bird came along and wanted to take moving pictures of my cheese and I pasted him in the eye.”
John Lentell
3rd December, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“Le secret d’ennuyer est….de tout dire.”
(The way to be a bore (for an author) is to say everything.)
(Voltaire, 1694 – 1778)
John Lentell
2nd December, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.”
(Samuel Butler, 1835 – 1902)
John Lentell
1st December, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“The nature of God is a circle of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
(Empedocles, 490 – 430 BC)
John Lentell
30th November, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“It seems in some cases kind nature hath planned,
That names with their calling agree,
For Twining the Teaman that lives in the Strand
Would be ‘Wining’ deprived of his T”.
(Theodore Hook, 1788 – 1841)
John Lentell
29th November 1969
(Sorry for missed “pieces”, have been in Vietnam with my hot new girlfriend! – Gour)
Friday’s Piece
“….a Puritan tendency is by no means an essential part of a religious disposition. The Puritan’s character is joyless and morose; he is most happy, or, to speak less paradoxically, most at peace with himself when sad. It is a mental condition correlated with the well-known Puritan features, black straight hair, hollowed cheeks, and sallow complexion.”
(From Hereditary Genius published in 1869 by by Sir Francis Galton, 1822 – 1911)
John Lentell
28th November, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“Surely we in (South Africa) can have no truck with dictatorship in any form, whether it is that dictatorship of the proletariat which is Communism, or that dictatorship of the individual, a group, which is Fascism.”
(J.H. Hofmeyr, 1894 – 1948)
John Lentell
27th November, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
“Who can be wise, amazed, temperate, and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.”
(Macbeth, when asked why he killed Duncan’s alleged assassins, William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616)
John Lentell
26th November, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“People wouldn’t get divorced for such trivial reasons, if they didn’t get married for such trivial reasons.”
(Source unknown)
John Lentell
25th November, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.”
(John Seleden, 1584 – 1654)
John Lentell
24th November, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“In the past fourteen years, long consideration of the march of scientific and material events has convinced me of the certainty of a personal immortality…..Every material and scientific signpost points to the finality of death. Yet I believe we are immortal.”
(Professor Ian Aird, 1905 – 1962, Professor of Surgery at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital, London)
John Lentell
23rd November, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“We must touch his weaknesses with a delicate hand. There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence, that we can scarce weed out the fault without eradicating the virtue.”
(Oliver Goldsmith, 1730 -1774)
John Lentell
22nd November, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“To procrastinate over our best inner urges is to rob ourselves of much of the bounce and guts of life.”
(William Moulton Marston, 1893 – 1947)
John Lentell
21st November, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“There is in all of us an unseeing urge towards self-fulfilment. We know the kind of person we want to be because of our impulses, even when enfeebled by disuse, tell us. Impulsive action is not to be substituted for reason, but used as a means of showing the direction reason is to take.”
(William Moulton Marston, 1893 – 1947)
John Lentell
20th November, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
“Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.”
(Edmund Burke, 1729 – 1797)
John Lentell
19th November, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.”
(John Stuart Mill, 1806 – 1873)
John Lentell
18th November, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“See the happy moron,
He doesn’t give a damn,
I wish I were a moron,
My God! Perhaps I am!”
(Anon)
John Lentell
17th November, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“May he support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging and a holy rest, and peace at the last.”
(John Henry Newman – Cardinal Newman, 1801 – 1890)
John Lentell
16th November, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”
(John Stuart Mill, 1806 – 1873)
John Lentell
15th November, 1969
Lentell Soup 