“Modern economists and psychologists seem to me to have an overdose conscientiousness and not enough of insight.”
(From The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976)
John Lentell
15th December, 1969
Month: July 2011
Sunday’s Piece
“Western capitalism has not yet discovered a dynamic substitute for the self-advancing entrepreneur. Only the prospect of personal gain can provide the lively eye on the future, the gambler’s skill, the restless awareness of what industries are finished and what still to come, on which the city’s reputation must eventually stand or fall.”
(From Anatomy of Britain by Anthony Sampson, 1926 – 2004)
John Lentell (who, while acknowledging the awful truth of this statement, does not interpret it as licence for the abandonment of altruistic concepts in civic affairs).
14th December, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“If you look like your passport photograph – you need the trip!”
John Lentell
13th December, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
(Submitted but not published – rejected by newspaper censors, for the 2nd time!)
“There was a young lady of Kent,
Who said she knew what it meant
When asked by men to dine,
Gave her cocktails and wine,
She knew what it meant – but she went!”
(Anon.)
John Lentell
Saturday 13th December, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.”
(Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 – 1961)
John Lentell
12th December, 1969
Thursday’s Piece
“Biologically speaking, man has the inborn task of defending three things: himself, his family and his tribe.”
(From The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, 1928 – )
John Lentell
11th December, 1969
Wednesday’s Piece
“The fact that internal squabbles are suppressed by the existence of a common enemy has not escaped the attention of rulers past and present. If an overgrown super-tribe is beginning to split at the seams, the splits can rapidly be stitched up by the appearance of a powerful hostile THEM that converts us into a unified US.”
(From The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, 1928 – )
John Lentell
10th December, 1969
Tuesday’s Piece
“Five years of study and work…..have only taught me one thing: a determination to keep my mind prepared for surprise, and to have confidence in life in all its forms, and in intelligence wherever and however it may be manifested in living things around me. These two states: surprise and confidence are inseparable.”
(Louis Pauwels, 1920 -1997)
John Lentell
9th December, 1969
Monday’s Piece
“Television: Vidiot’s delight.”
John Lentell
8th December, 1969
Sunday’s Piece
“The men and women who can laugh at their love, who can kiss with smiles and embrace with chuckles, will outlast in mutual affection all the throat lumpy, cow-eyed couples of their acquaintance. Nothing lives on so fresh and evergreen as the love with a funny bone.”
(American drama critic and editor, George Jean Nathan, 1882 – 1958)
John Lentell
7th November, 1969
Saturday’s Piece
“….I like to visit junk shops. There is so much of humanity, vanity and insanity in them.”
(Carl Sandburg, 1878 – 1967)
John Lentell
6th December, 1969
Friday’s Piece
“The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.”
(Letters to His Son, 1746, published 1774 by Philip Lord Chesterfield, 1694 – 1773)
John Lentell
5th December, 1969
Lentell Soup 