Neurotic: A person who, when you ask how she is, tells you.
John Lentell
13th December, 1970
(Photo of John)
Thursday’s Piece
The world makes way for a resolute soul; obstacles get out of the path of a determined man who believes in himself.
(Orison Swett Marden, 1848 – 1924)
John Lentell
12th December, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
If I were a cassowary
On the plains of Timbuktu,
I would eat a missionary,
Cassock, band, and hymn-book too.
(Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, 1805 – 1873)
John Lentell
11th December, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
These ladies of irresistible modesty are those who make virtue unamiable.
Sir Richard Steele, 1672 – 1729)
John Lentell
10th December, 1970
Monday’s Piece
An act for the more effectual discouraging of the crime of adultery was sent down from the Lords. The question being put, That the Bill be read a second time – Ayes 40, Noes 51.
(House of Commons 1754)
John Lentell
9th December, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
Information, free from interest or prejudice, free from the vanity of the writer or the influence of a government, is as necessary to the human mind as pure air and water to the human body.
The Times, London, 21 September 1970
(William Rees-Mogg, 1928 – 2012)
John Lentell
8th December, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
To this Bill Mr. Zacharias Locke began to speak, but, for very fear shook, so that he could not proceed, but stood still for a while, and at length sat down.
(House of Commons reporter, 1601)
John Lentell
7th December, 1970
Friday’s Piece
What thing is love? – for (well I wot) love is a thing,
It is a prick, it is a sting,
it is a pretty, pretty thing;
It is a fire, it is a coal
Whose flame creeps in at every hole!
(George Peele, 1556 – 1596)
John Lentell
6th December, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose;
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart.
(Matthew Prior, 1664 – 1721)
John Lentell
6th December, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week,
But I’m damned if I see how the helican.
(Dixon Lanier Merritt, 1879–1972)
John Lentell
5th December, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“A paratrooper is a soldier who climbs down trees he never climbed up.”
John Lentell
4th December, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“Here’s to woman! Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.”
(Ambrose Bierce, 1842 – 1914)
John Lentell
3rd December, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“When people’s ill, they comes to I,
I physics, bleed, and sweats ’em;
Sometimes they live, sometimes they die.
What’s that to I? I lets ’em.”
(J.C. Lettsom, 1744 – 1815)
John Lentell
2nd December, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“Have you heard of the terrible family They,
And the dreadful venomous things They say?
Why, half of the gossip under the sun,
If you trace it back, you will find begun
In that wretched House of They.”
(Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850 – 1919)
John Lentell
1st December, 1970
Friday’s Piece
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
(Elbert Hubbard, 1856 – 1915)
John Lentell
30th November, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“If you want to get rich you son of a bitch,
I’ll tell you what to do:
Never sit down with a tear or a frown,
And paddle your own canoe.”
(Anon.)
John Lentell
29th November, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
(Ernest Hemingway, 1899 – 1961)
John Lentell
28th November, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“Love’s mysteries in souls do grow
And yet the body is his book.”
(John Donne, 1572 – 1631)
John Lentell
27th November, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together”
(Thomas Eliot, 1888 – 1965)
John Lentell
26th November, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
“When one begins to know that he doesn’t know, then he first begins to know a great deal.”
(Professor R.M. Wenly, 1861 – 1929)
John Lentell
25th November, 1970
Lentell Soup 