“We are all falling. This hand’s falling too –
all have this falling sickness none withstands.
And yet there’s always One whose gentle hands
this universal feeling falling can’t fall through.”
(From Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 – 1926)
John Lentell
17th August, 1969
“My colleagues of the Film Division of the Ministry of Information were as nice a bunch of boys and girls as ever were corduroy. I suppose most of them earned their livings before the war, but I cannot for the life of me imagine how.”
(From Clean, Bright and Slightly Oiled by Gerald Kersh, 1911 – 1968)
John Lentell
16th August, 1969
“Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.”
(William Pitt, 1708 – 1778)
John Lentell
15th August, 1969
“True glory lies in noble deeds, and in the recognition, alike by leading men and by the nation at large, of valuable services rendered to the State.”
(From the Philippicae by Cicero, 106 BC to 43 BC)
John Lentell
14th August, 1969
(It doesn’t accurately describe Salisbury but no harm in hoping!)
“Her woman fair; her men robust for toil;
Her vigorous souls, high cultured as her soil;
Her towns, where civic independence flings
The gauntlet down to senates, courts and kings.”
(Thomas Campbell, 1777 – 1844)
John Lentell
13th August, 1969
“Shall Sarum always crouch beneath
Some Boroughmonger’s rod?
Or shall we still subservient be
To petty tyrant’s nod?
Indignantly forbit it all,
Forbid it, hearts so true,
And shew us, at your country’s call,
What Sarumites can do.
We’ve scorned corruption – scorn’d to bend
At Baa’ls shrine the knee;
We’ll quell opression in her might;
We’ve sworn we will be free.
The great, the good, throughout the land,
Extol the deeds we’ve done,
And call us to complete the work
We’ve gallantly begun.
Then rise, Reformers, Sarum’s friends!
Stand forth, ye tried and true,
And show us, at your city’s call,
What Sarum’s men can do.”
(In imitation of New Cornish Reform Song – “One and All”)
John Lentell
12th August, 1969
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporsary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
(Ernest Hemingway, 1899 – 1961)
John Lentell
11th August, 1969
“Oscar Wilde arrived at his club one evening, after witnessing a first production of a play that was a complete failure.
‘Oscar, how did your play go tonight?’ said a friend.
‘Oh,’ was the lofty response, ‘the play was a great success, but the audience was a failure.’ ”
(Daniel Frohman, 1851 – 1940)
John Lentell
9th August, 1969
“Youth is past when the sensation of adventure is ended, when instead of the boundless expectation and curiosity that penetrates all the corners of existence, a man is content to take things as they are, when eagerness gives way to complacency and questioning to the cynicism of experience. The man devoid of curiosity is the man who in the end attains to nothing.”
(The Living Age, an American weekly journal published between 1844 – 1900)
John Lentell
8th August, 1969
“One must not tie a ship to a single anchor, nor life to a single hope.”
(Epictetus, AD 55 – 135)
John Lentell
7th August, 1969
“Everyman will fall who, though born a man, proudly presumes to be a superman.”
(Sophocles, 497 – 406 BC)
John Lentell
6th August, 1969
“The modest man has everything to gain, and the arrogant man everything to lose; for modesty has always to deal with generosity, and arrogance with envy.”
(Antoine de Rivarol, 1753 – 1801)
John Lentell
5th Augsut, 1969
“If you have a wounded heart, touch it as little as you would an injured eye. There are only two remedies for the suffering of the soul:- hope and patience.”
(Pythagoras, 570 – 495 BC)
John Lentell
4th August, 1969
“English is the only language in which names are ever pronounced differently from the way in which they are splet. The origin of the custom is unknown, but it probably arose in mediaeval times when everybody spelt as fancy or ignorance moved them – e.g.:
Spelt – Pronounced
ARUNDEL – Arrandel
BLOUNT – Blunt
GLAMIS – Glarms
GOWER – Gore
MAINWAIRING – Mannering
MARJORIBANKS – Marshbanks
MONTGOMERY – Mungum’ery
WEMYSS – Weems”
(From The Book of Etiquette by Lady Troubridge, 1887 – 1963)
John Lentell
3rd August, 1969
“No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.”
(John Ruskin, 1819 – 1900)
John Lentell
“Tired with all these, from these would I be gone.
Save that to die, I leave my love alone.”
(From Sonnet LXVI by William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616)
John Lentell
1st Augsut, 1969
“There once was a man who said, ‘Damn!
It is borne in upon me I am
An engine that moves
In predestinate grooves,
I’m not even a bus I’m a tram.’ ”
(Maurice Hare, 1886-1967)
John Lentell
31st July, 1969
Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.”
(Thomas Carlyle, 1975 – 1881)
John Lentell
30th July, 1969
” ‘Yes,’ I answered you last night;
‘No,’ this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight
Will not look the same by day.”
(From The Lady’s Yes by Elizabeth Browning, 1806 – 1861)
John Lentell
29th July, 1969
“Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?”
(Opening line from Chrononhotonthologos by Henry Carey, 1687 – 1743)
John Lentell
28th July, 1969
Lentell Soup 