“There was a politician in Indiana who was really honest. When he was bought, he stayed bought.”
John Lentell
9th March, 1970
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Month: September 2011
Tuesday’s Piece
“…..this Association (Salisbury Municipal Employees’ Association) is in no way connected with any political party….There must be many members who will have good reason to seriously consider supporting Mr. R. James.”
(Mrs M.W. Beaton, Secretary, S.M.E.A. in letter to Rhodesia Herald – 6/3/70)
John Lentell
8th March, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call to-day his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.”
(John Dryden, 1631 – 1700)
John Lentell
7th March, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“The ordinary man…..has been spending his life for the last couple of generations in this will-o’the-wisp pursuit of power, trying to get his hands on the levers of big policy, and trying to find out where it is, and how it was that his life was shaped for him by somebody else.”
(Aneurin Bevan, 1897 – 1960)
John Lentell
6th March, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“So many people presume to know God and what God approves and God disapproves that it is impossible to take up this subject without opening oneself to attack as sacrilegious by some and as a prophet by others.”
(From The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976)
John Lentell
5th March, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“Can Mr Gaunt really believe, as he has indicated in a recent article, that the ‘intelligent and healthy’ Rhodesian young, after going abroad to ‘see how the rest of the world lives’, will find it inspiring to return and live in the insular, humourless and smug society which white Rhodesia has now become?”
(Letter to Rhodesia Herald – March 2nd)
John Lentell
4th March, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
(Samuel Johnson, 1709 – 1784)
John Lentell
3rd March, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
“…..our personalities are not so independent as our self-consciousness leads us to believe. We may look upon each individual as something not wholly detached from its parent source, – as a wave that has been lifted and shaped by normal conditions in an unknown, illimitable ocean.”
(Sir Francis Galton, 1822 – 1911)
John Lentell
2nd March, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“The longest journey
Is the journey inwards.
Of him who has chosen his destiny,
Who has started upon his quest
For the source of his being.”
(Is there a source?)
(Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 – 1961)
John Lentell
1st March, 1970
Monday’s Piece
The boat-rockers are the people who fiddle. The people who fiddle money or its equivalent out of the country – out of Rhodesia. It is almost a national pastime. Which perhaps explains why, to my knowledge, not one man-at-the-top has so far raised a voice in warning or protest. Of what worth is the “Good Old Smithy” waffle when at every opportunity a few more quid (sorry – dollars!) are added to the external stockpile – Johannesburg – Geneva – London -Where-have-you?. The pastime is widespread, we all know about it, it stinks and those who indulge in it stand in the shadow of Gahaller and Nicholson. Customs should examine the people going out at least as thoroughly as they examine the people coming in.
John Lentell
28th February, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
Asked if the world was round, Mary answered, “No”.
“Is it flat?”
“No.”
“If it isn’t flat and it isn’t round, what is it?”
“Daddy says it crooked.”
John Lentell
27th February, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“You can take no credit for beauty at 16. But if you are beautiful at 60, it will be your own soul’s doing. Then you may be proud of it and be loved for it.”
(Marie Stopes, 1880 – 1958)
John Lentell
26th February, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“Rastus after being reprimanded by the judge for deserting his wife:
‘Jedge, ef you’ knowed dat woman like Ah does, you’ wouldn’t call me no deserter. Ah’s a refugee.'”
John Lentell
25th February, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of view.”
(Robert Surtees, 1805 – 1864)
John Lentell
24th February, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
“Every cabinet is necessarily selected from a limited field. No doubt it always contains some few persons of very high natural gifts, who would have found their way to the front under any reasonably fair political regime, but it also invariably contains others who would have fallen far behind in the struggle for place and influence.”
(Sir Francis Galton, 1822 – 1911)
John Lentell
23rd February, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“….MPs are being selected for totally different qualities. ‘They’re chosen because they’re good at talking, not doing’. As one cabinet minister put it, ‘It’s very difficult to find people who can actually run things.'”
(Anthony Sampson, 1926 – 2004)
John Lentell
22nd February, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“A stone mason was ordered to carve ‘Lord, she was thine’ on a tombstone. He found that he had not worked out his spaces correctly and there was no room for the last letter. The finished job read:-
‘Lord, she was thin’.
John Lentell
21st February, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.”
(Confucius, 551 BC – 479 BC)
John Lentell
20th February, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“Dale Martin…..was….ordered by a judge in Vancouver to avoid making any woman pregnant for the next three years. Martin (22) an entertainer, was given a suspended sentence and placed on three years probation for having an offensive weapon.”
(Report in the Sunday Mail, Salisbury)
John Lentell
18th February, 1970
(Submitted but rejected for publication by the Rhodesia Herald newspaper)
Friday’s Piece
“In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”
(Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 – 1961)
John Lentell
18th February, 1970
