“Success in love consists not so much in marrying the one who can make you happy as in escaping the many who could make you miserable.”
(Chuck Swindoll, 1934 – )
John Lentell
Tuesday’s Piece
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
(Blaise Pascal, 1623 – 1662)
John Lentell
6th August, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“A votary of the desk – a notched and cropt scrivener – one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill.”
(Charles Lamb, 1775 – 1834)
John Lentell
5th August, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“The languid way in which he gives you a handful of numb unresponsive fingers is very significant.”
(Carlyle on Wordsworth)
John Lentell
4th August, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“Samuel Johnson: ‘I do not hate the Scots sir, neither do I hate frogs, but I’m damned if I like them hopping around my chambers.'”
John Lentell
3rd August, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“The most swollen-headed, vainglorious nincompoops in existence. Dirty little £5 a-week fellers.”
(Sam harris, film magnate, on critics)
John Lentell
2nd August, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“Fish and visitors spoil after the third day.”
(Old saying)
John Lentell
1st August, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself.”
(George Meredith, 1828 – 1909)
John Lentell
30th July, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.”
(Edward John Phelps, 1822 – 1900)
John Lentell
29th July, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
“Two big factors restrict strikes. One is the unions’ small funds, which amount only to an average week’s wages to each man. The other is public opinion, which looms like a genie: the TUC knows well that strikes by public services, as by the London busmen in 1958, can make the genie scowl.”
(From Anatomy of Britain by Anthony Sampson, 1926 – 2004)
John Lentell
18th July, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“It takes a thousand nuts to put a car together but it only takes one nut to spread it all over the road!”
John Lentell
17th July, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
(Mark Twain, 1853-1910)
John Lentell
15th July, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“Dr. Philip Blaiberg left an estate of $90,000, his wife being the sole heiress with the exception of his maid who inherits $50.”
(Rhodesia Television News bulletin – 14/7/70)
John Lentell
16th July, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“One of Queen Victoria’s grandsons wrote asking her for money. She replied – not enclosing any money but warning against the consequences of forming extravagant habits in early youth. Whereupon he replied ‘Dearest Grandma – I received your letter and hope you do not think that I was disappointed because you could not send me the money. It was very kind of you to give me the good advice, and I sold your letter for forty pounds, ten shillings.'”
(Reminiscences by Sir Henry Luey)
John Lentell
14th July, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
Golfer (to members ahead): “Pardon me, but would you mind if I played through? I’ve just heard that my wife has been taken seriously ill.”
John Lentell
13th July, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“All the following advice presupposes that whoever faces catastrophe takes a deep breath and makes up his mind to have a really determined go to beat the odds at all costs.”
(Forward to The Book of Survival by Anthony Greenbank, pub 1968)
John Lentell
12th July, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“Of all the institutions in our inordinately complacent society, none is so addicted as the press to self-righteousness, self-satisfaction and self-congratulation.”
(A.H. Raskin, 1934-1977)
John Lentell
11th July, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“Dear Mr. Lentell,
You do write the most stupid rubbish that we have ever read. All this ‘unRhodesian’ which you keep writing about, what is so special about Rhodesia?
Signed
‘Rhodesian'”
(Part of an anonymous letter)
John Lentell
10th July, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
“As the birth of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.”
(Sir Francis Bacon 1561 – 1626)
John Lentell
9th July, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“Dear Mr. Lentell,
Having heard people discussing your ‘pieces’ in the paper, I find they are all wondering what the motive is behind your putting them in. Is it to convey truth? Is it to amuse, or is it to satisfy your ego and to let you feel that 50,000 readers, or more, of the Herald, are not reading the ‘piece’, but looking at the name of John Lentell?
To prove the point is not the latter, I challenge you to put in the ‘pieces’ without your name below them.
Yours sincerely,
Curious”
(Anonymous letter – 15th Oct, 1968)
John Lentell
8th July, 1970
Lentell Soup 