“O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem’d my flame to qualify.”
(William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616)
John Lentell
4th May, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“Under normal circumstances, in their natural habitats, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds, or commit murder. Among human city dwellers, needless to say, all of these things occur.”
(From The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, 1928 – )
John Lentell
1st May, 1970
(Rejected for publication by the Rhodesia Herald for being in ‘poor taste’ )
Wednesday’s Piece
“If males wish to appear super-normally young, they can wear toupees to cover their bald heads, false teeth to fill their gaping mouths, and corsets to hold in their sagging bellies. Young executives, who wish to appear super-normally old, have been known to indulge in artificially greying of their juvenile hair.”
(From The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, 1928 – )
John Lentell
1st May, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
(Walt Whitman, 1819 – 1892)
John Lentell
30th April, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
(Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900)
John Lentell
29th April, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“The Roman patricians of the year 33, the philosophers and the intellectuals would have been highly amused if they had been told that the unknown young Jew, tried by the procurator of a distant colony, who, so as to avoid complications, handed him over against his will to the crowd, would play an infinitely greater role than Caesar, would dominate the history of the Occident, and become the purest symbol of all humanity….”
(From Human Destiny by Pierre Lecomte du Noüy, 1883 – 1947)
John Lentell
28th April, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
During his days as a dramatic critic, Robert Benchley covered a play on Broadway called The Squall. When the inevitable half-caste girl said, “Me Nubi. Me good girl. Me stay.” Benchley squirmed in hi seat and whispered to a companion, “Me Bobby. Me bad boy. Me go.”
John Lentell
27th April, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
(Aldous Huxley, 1894 – 1963)
John Lentell
24th April, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
“Love…..which requires reasons is no true love…..love should be perfectly natural, as natural for man as for the birds to flap their wings….”
(From The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, 1895 – 1976)
John Lentell
23rd April, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
“Living with someone when you are in love with someone else seems to me the essence of prostitution – and when he is your husband it is worse, because there is no escape. I lie rigid and try to make my mind a dark blank and remind myself that it is right and proper and that this is what I am here for. And the loneliness goes out of everything and I fell ill….”
(From ‘Letter for Tomorrow‘ by Rosemary Ross Skinner)
John Lentell
22nd April, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“History tells us of a white-haired shepherd of Sparta, who learned to understand men perfectly from always having lived alone with his sheep.”
John Lentell
21st April, 1970
Monday’s Piece
“We have not got thise tipe of shourts”
(Reply in total from prominent local clothing factory to courteous 84 word memo enquiring for assistance in locating further supplies – scribbled on on reverse and handed back to messenger who motored 7 miles there and back!)
John Lentell
19th April, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“Only when there are 150,000 fewer fertilizations per day than there are at present, will we be holding the human population steady at its already overgrown level.”
(From The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, 1928 – )
John Lentell
18th April, 1970
Saturday’s Piece
A friend in conversation with Voltaire said:
“It is good of you to say such pleasant things of Monsieur X when he always says such nasty things of you.”
To which Voltaire replied:
“Perhaps we are both mistaken.”
John Lentell
17th April, 1970
Friday’s Piece
“A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grow keener with constant use.”
(Washington Irving, 1783-1859)
John Lentell
16th April, 1970
Thursday’s Piece
Small boy on being disciplined: Don’t say must, mother. It makes me feel won’t all over.
John Lentell
15th April, 1970
Wednesday’s Piece
“……the rebels and innovators….in a smaller tribal community, would be subjected to much greater cohesive forces. They would be flattened by the demands of conformity.”
(Desmond Morris, 1928 – )
John Lentell
14th April, 1970
Tuesday’s Piece
“There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.”
(George Bernard Shaw, 1856 – 1950)
John Lentell
12th April 1970
Monday’s Piece
“The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.”
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 – 1882)
John Lentell
11th April, 1970
Sunday’s Piece
“I don’t set up to be no judge of right and wrong in men,
I’ve lost the trail sometimes myself an’ may get lost again;
An’ when I see a chap who looks as though he’d gone astray,
I want to shove my hand in his an’ help him find the way.”
(J.A. Foley)
John Lentell
10th April, 1970
Lentell Soup 