One secretary to another:
“If I can’t spell the words in the first place how does he expect me to find them in a dictionary?”
John Lentell
14th January, 1971
Month: February 2016
Sunday’s Piece
A statistician is a man who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.
(Anon)
John Lentell
13th January, 1971
Saturday’s Piece
The only means of strengthening ones intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party.
(John Keats, 1795 – 1821)
John Lentell
12th January, 1971
Friday’s Piece
Inscription on tombstone:
“This man died at 30;
He was buried at 70.”
John Lentell
11th January, 1971
Thursday’s Piece
I live in a constant endeavour to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles —but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.
(Laurence Sterne, 1713 – 1768)
John Lentell
10th January, 1971
Wednesday’s Piece
If men knew all that women think, they’d be twenty times more daring.
(Alphonse Karr, 1808 – 1890)
John Lentell
9th January, 1971
Tuesday’s Piece
PREJUDICE: being down on something you’re not up on.
(G.W. Allport, 1897 – 1967)
John Lentell
8th January, 1971
Monday’s Piece
Farm: what a city man dreams of at 5 pm, never at 5 am.
John Lentell
7th January, 1971
Sunday’s Piece
Where there are many hands the lentils get burnt.
(Wise saying from the orient!)
John Lentell
6th January, 1971
Saturday’s Piece
Nothing is easier than fault-finding; no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character are required to set up in the grumbling business.
(Robert West)
John Lentell
5th January 1971
Friday’s Piece
The thing that numbs the heart if this:
That men cannot devise
Some scheme of life to banish fear
That lurks in most men’s eyes.
(James Norman Hall, 1887 – 1951)
John Lentell
4th January, 1971
Thursday’s Piece
Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she’s at rest, and so am I.
(Epitaph intended for John Dryden‘s wife)
John Lentell
3rd January, 1971
John Dryden by John Michael Wright, 1668 (detail)
National Portrait Gallery, London
Wednesday’s Piece
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.
(Thomas Jefferson, 1743 – 1826)
John Lentell
1st January, 1971
Tuesday’s Piece
They say a reasonable amount o’fleas is good fer a dog – keeps him from broodin’ over bein’ a dog, mebbe.
(Edward Noyes Westcott, 1846 – 1898)
John Lentell
30th December, 1970
Monday’s Piece
John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.
(Letter from John Donne to his wife)
John Lentell
29th December, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.
(Thomas Hobbes, 1588 – 1679)
John Lentell
28th December, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
If you your lips would keep from slips
Five things observe with care;
To whom you speak, of whom you speak,
And how, and when, and where.
(William Edward Norris, 1847 – 1925)
John Lentell
27th December, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain’t no flies on me,
But jest ‘fore Christmas I’m as good a I kin be!
(Eugene Field, 1850 – 1895)
John Lentell
Christmas Day
25th December, 1970
Monday’s Piece
All violent feelings….produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterise as the ‘Pathetic Fallacy’.
(John Ruskin, 1819 – 1900)
John Lentell
24th December, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
At a banquet of firemen the chief proposed this toast:
“The Ladies! Their eyes kindle the only flame which we cannot extinguish, and against which there is no insurance.”
(Anonymous Toast quote)
John Lentell
23rd December, 1970
Lentell Soup 