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Mortal modern words
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Message 1.Β
Posted by Priscilla (U14315550) on Friday, 26th August 2011
History - and probably maany of us here - is stuffed with memorable quotes. There are still a few being uttered but they will, I fear. be lost in the great backwash of IT flow.
Here are two I enjoy:
From 'ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔr Simpson'....."Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand."
What about this enviable last few words from dedicated non believer, never cared a damn journalist and fine son on Baltimore Henry L. Mencken......"Bring on the Angels."
As it turned out, he revived and survived 7 years after that but with his memory gone....... mmmm.
Please dredge up a few more before thay are los forever.
Regards, P -
Message 2
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Friday, 26th August 2011
Actually Priscilla I think that since the advent of IT quotations are being used far too often. There's no impressing folk anymore.
In the good old days I could dip into my father's battered 1953 edition of "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" and then come out (with apparently casual brilliance) with something from Juvenal or Horace or Tolstoy or somebody equally good. It was so easy to sound far more brainy or educated than you actually were.
Try that nowadays and a bored "Been googling again have we?" is the only response you get.
But I still consult my copy of "The Funniest Things You Never Said" which I keep handy in our downstairs loo. Full of great quotes. Current favourites: "He's as slippery as an eel that's been rubbed all over with axle-grease." (P.G.Wodehouse) and "Don't look at me in that tone of voice." (Punch)
SST. -
Message 3
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Friday, 26th August 2011
"Don't look at me in that tone of voice."Β
So that saying derived from Punch, I never knew that. Since I heard it used often when a child, I assumed it came from one of the wartime radio comedy shows.
I've got the 1964 edition of the ODQ, it's not only battered but well chewed at the corners where my puppy got hold of it.
One suggestion
Blackadder: "Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?"
Baldrick:"Yes, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made out of iron". -
Message 4
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Friday, 26th August 2011
I know, I know this is not a modern quote. But I recently came across it and what is striking is that it COULD have been written yesterday.
"Times are bad, Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book"
Marcus Tullius Cicero. -
Message 5
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Friday, 26th August 2011
Cicero must hold his hands up and take at least some of the blame for just that state of affairs, however. After all, his ironic advice while still relatively young to those intent on social advancement - "Even should you have nothing to write, then write exactly that" - must have indeed haunted him in later life when so many took him most unironically at his word and then even quoted him in a pathetic attempt at justifying their recremental output.
And some things never change. I have even heard Wilbur Smith use it once to justify his own copious "literary" recrementae. -
Message 6
Posted by Caro (U1691443) on Friday, 26th August 2011
We did some study of Cicero when I was at school/university, but I don't remember that quote; maybe our teachers didn't want to encourage us. Wilbur Smith doesn't need the encouragement of long-dead Romans to pour out his screeds; sales and readership is enough.
Yesterday at the library I put on display a book called New Zealand Quotations. I didn't look inside it, but it was quite large and I can't help wondering if some of the quotations wouldn't be just padding. I think our three best-known quotes would be David Lange's "I can smell the uranium on his breath" during his Oxford nuclear debate, Robert Muldoon's (not original) one about people leaving for Australia that it raises the iq of both countries, and Micky Savage's one at the start of WWII "Where Britain goes, we go." (Thankfully not taken into account by our government during the Iraq War.)
These are all from Prime Ministers - I don't think our present PM says anything worth of memory, he waits to see what popular feeling would be before opening his mouth. Though the three I quoted would also be in accordance with public opinion.
Cheers, Caro. -
Message 7
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 27th August 2011
"Nature, not content with denying Mr - the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing."
From a list of insults drafted by A. E. Housman (1937). The name was left blank to be filled in as required. -
Message 8
Posted by alanpatten (U1866183) on Saturday, 27th August 2011
Mandy Rice Davis "He would say that, wouldn't he?".
I don't know to whom she was referring, but I believe she was addressing a barrister at the time.
Regards..............Alan -
Message 9
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Saturday, 27th August 2011
I remember it all so well. It was in response to Lord Astor denying having even met her and what she said was "Well he would, wouldn't he".
The joke at the time, and a put down in its own right, was - What's John Profumo's favourite film? How Green was my Valerie." -
Message 10
Posted by alanpatten (U1866183) on Saturday, 27th August 2011
Who was that American Civil War general, who said words to the effect that they couldn't hit barn door from where they are, and was immediately shot dead by the enemy?
Regards..............Alan -
Message 11
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 27th August 2011
That was General John Sedgwick's assessment of Confederate snipers who were harrying his troops' deployment around Spotsylvania Courthouse. The apocryphal quotation is traditionally rendered as "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...". Mortal words indeed.
Except they weren't his last words. The incident's account is based on the recollections of his colleague General MacMahon who, in his report immediately after the skirmish, had Sedgwick actually completing the sentence - in fact he said it twice - as he rebuked a soldier who instinctively ducked at the sound of a sniper's bullet. The trooper informed Sedgwick that dodging artillery fire had proven its worth as a policy for him personally in the past, to which the General laughingly retorted "All right, my man, go to your place". A moment later he was shot by a sniper's bullet himself. -
Message 12
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 28th August 2011
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein
and
Political correctness is tyranny with manners.
Charlton Heston. About the only thing he ever uttered that made sense. -
Message 13
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 28th August 2011
Mandy Rice Davis "He would say that, wouldn't he?".
I don't know to whom she was referring, but I believe she was addressing a barrister at the time.
Έι±π²΅²Ή°ω»ε²υ..............΄‘±τ²Ή²ΤΜύ
She was responding to Mervyn Griffith-Jones's questioning. Griffith-Jones had earlier been the prosecuting counsel at the "Lady Chatterley's Lover" obscenity trial, and his astounding opening remarks there are often quoted. He asked the incredulous members of the jury (who were apparently much amused) whether the Penguin publication was a book "you would wish your wives or servants to read." This was in 1960! -
Message 14
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Sunday, 28th August 2011
Not only the jury! People just couldn't believe anyone could say something so monumentally stupid. Of course he destroyed his own case completely, nobody could take it seriously after that! (Maybe that's what he intended!)
-
Message 15
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 29th August 2011
...nobody could take it seriously after that! Β
So many solemn pronouncements made by eminent men seem utterly ridiculous to us now. Here is a quotation from Lord Baden-Powell: he warns the youth of the Empire against indulgence in the solitary vice:
"A very large number of the lunatics in our asylums have made themselves ill by indulging in this vice, although at one time they were sensible and cheery boys like you."
An earlier warning to all sensible and cheery boys had been given during the 1830s by Sylvester Graham (a Presbyterian minister more famous for having invented the whole wheat cracker - the modern era's first "health food"). Graham's prediction as to the outcome of continued indulgence in the habit must have caused terrible distress:
"The general mental decay continues with the continued abuses, till the wretched transgressor sinks into a miserable fatuity, and finally becomes a confirmed and degraded idiot, whose deeply sunken and vacant glassy eye, and livid, shrivelled countenance, and ulcerated toothless gums, and fetid breath, and feeble broken voice, and emaciated and dwarfish and crooked body, and almost hairless head - covered perhaps with suppurating blisters and running sores - denotes a premature old age - a blighted body - a ruined soul."
Crikey - and don't all those commas make it sound far worse?
But then I wonder what solemn pronouncements made by the experts of our own time will seem utterly ridiculous in 2111? -
Message 16
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 29th August 2011
βI want us to do even more to encourage the risk takersβ (Gordon Brown in his Mansion House speech to the City of London, 17 June 2004)
Actually, come to think of it, this one even sounds utterly ridiculous in 2011! -
Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Monday, 29th August 2011
Temperance
If only things stayed at the level of the ridiculous.. Apparently in the USA in the inter-war period some parents had their sons castrated in order to save their mental health from this terrible danger.
Nordmann
Gordon Brown and "risk-taking".. This is the PM whose mantra during his General Election failure was that the Financial Crisis was produced by global factors over which the UK has no control.. But in earlier ages with different kinds of threats over which we had no control our governments (from the age of Alfred the Great) made provision to keep the country secure. Traditionally that has been seen as the first task of any government.
Cass -
Message 18
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Monday, 29th August 2011
It seems now that the first task of governments is to rubbish the one before, and the second task is to pocket* as much money as they can.
* Why do we have to say 'trouser' these days, when 'pocket' is the correct expression. After all, you don't need to wear trousers to make away with someone else's money! -
Message 19
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 4th September 2011
Perhaps the following could be kept as a reminder of the misery and futility of life experienced by many in 1990s England. It is a quotation from a letter to Islington Council Housing Department:
"This is to let you know our lavatory seat is broken and we can't get ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ2."
Alas, the Soul of Man under Socialism! -
Message 20
Posted by George1507 (U2607963) on Tuesday, 6th September 2011
PG Wodehouse and Dorothy Parker are the two writers whose stuff I love to read.
Wodehouse - 'she fitted into my largest armchair as though it had been fitted for her by someone who knew they were wearing armchairs tight about the hips that season'.
' I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.'
Parker - 'If all those sweet young things attending the Yale prom were laid end to end β nobody would be a bit surprised.'
'Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.'
'This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.'
'I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.' -
Message 21
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
PG Wodehouse and Dorothy Parker are the two writers whose stuff I love to read. Β
Whenever I feel all is lost, I turn to PG Wodehouse. He still offers that comfort that the Church of England, Enid Blyton, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Service and Bunty used to provide. There are so many quotes, but I like this one:
"Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards only to find the vodka bottle empty."
And Jeeves's words of wisdom always cheer when that nasty existential despair strikes:
"The mood will pass, sir." -
Message 22
Posted by giraffe47 (U4048491) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
You can keep your Shakespeare, Wodehouse is the MAN!!!
I have read all his books many times, and never failed to find something new and funny. The simple (and so apt) description of someone as a 'pink chap' sends me into insane giggles. He always helps 'the mood to pass' in the most delightful way!
And my old science teacher used to say - 'Don't look at me in that tone of handwriting' !
'Of course, back in those days, science was mostly alchemy, and boiling frogs, and things. . . . -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Well back in the days when it was vital that I should "lighten up" - as Temperance puts it- PGW was an essential part of my "switch off" mechanism.. During my late teens I had about three great bouts of reading PGW at about 60-70 volumes at a time.. I wonder whether every public library was/is quite so well-endowed with PGW as the public library near Carfax in Oxford, just opposite my bus-stop on the way home from school- before I took to the independence of cycling.. These days I re-revisit occasionally .. Most recently "Big Money" which has all kinds of descriptions and street names that place the heart of the action right here in what Norwood used to be in the twenties.
In Inimitable craftsman.
When I retired a pupil whose father is in the book trade gave me a copy of the "Bindle Omnibus" knowing of my penchant for PGW..The ascribed author is Herbert Jenkins- but PGW's introduction seems to hint that the Bindle stories were produced by a workshop or club not unlike the one that Bindle himself got drawn into.. Well worth a read.. But I do not know how easy it might be to track down.
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
This has been most interesting as I have never read any PGW, so still have that pleasure to come. My husband always relies on Evelyn Waugh for 'lightening up'.
I think on reflection that my own 'light relief' is Cold Comfort Farm. -
Message 25
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
raundsgirl
I don't know what the others will say.. but I would suggest that if you try PGW you chose something early..
But not the novel that I think was called "Bill" - a very sad study in that realistic late-nineteenth century school associated with people like Zola who pick out every single mischance that can befall and then chart the life of somebody who copss the lot.. What I recall was a child being raised in a clinically sterile environment.
PGW was still writing up to his eighties if not nineties- but by then he was churning them out for the loyal fanbase, moreover the tragic events of the Second World War had led to him exiling himself in the USA.. If you do not know the story. He was holidaying on the French Channel Coast in 1940 and was captured by the Germans. He subsequently accepted to read a humous piece on the Lord Haw Haw propaganda broadcasts and was branded a traitor. When released he became a US citizen..
In fact his pre-war work often has American and trans-Atlantic themes because he was also writing scripts for Hollywood and lyrics for Broadway shows.. And I think that in many ways his best work is set in that period of World Chaos when perhaps it was better to laugh than to cry..
I recall my mother habitually singing "Look for the silver lining".. which she rarely could.. Why I was so pleased to find PGW.
Cass -
Message 26
Posted by glen berro (U8860283) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Parker - 'If all those sweet young things attending the Yale prom were laid end to end β nobody would be a bit surprised.'Β
I once said, in the pub," If all the bar staff in Newcastle were laid end to end you'd never get served".
I thought I was being original but it seems I may have been stealing from Dorothy - who isn't a friend.
glen -
Message 27
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
I think on reflection that my own "light relief" is Cold Comfort Farm. Β
Possibly one of the greatest novels ever written, raundsgirl! Eat your heart out, Tolstoy! I love the names of the cows: Feckless, Graceless, Aimless and Pointless. One of them has a false leg, but I can't remember which one (the cow, not the leg).
Rev. Amos Starkadder's sermons - do you remember the one beginning, "Ye miserable, crawling worms. Are ye here again then?" It finishes with the terrible warning, "There'll be no butter in hell!" (to put on your burns).
PS Cass - you old juggernaut - I was only teasing you, you know.
PPS raundsgirl - they made a film of Cold Comfort Farm in 1995 - starring Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Ian McKellen - it's very good. -
Message 28
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Didn't see the film, Temp, but we did see the TV adaptation and that was very good. I just love the whole thing, she pokes such fun at, among others, DH Lawrence (the smouldering one who wants to be in movies) and I find Lawrence monumentally tedious except for some of his poems. There they are, being terribly rural and introverted, and along comes Flora, who simply ignores it all. I think I might have to go and read it again! -
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
Temp
I know... But it seemed "heavy" to comment on you saying so before -- and rude to ignore you.. so I opted for the oblique reference.. I probably got used to doing that kind of thing in the classroom..
A case of killing two stones with one bird.
Now for sure that would be most absurd..
And Sweet Sister Temp'rance
Would tell at a glance..J
Just which is the sad misplaced word..
Just thinking would it be a treat..
For MB members to meet.?.
Well there's facts and there's fancies..
There's sure things and chancies..
And here I am cooking me beet..
Well its one way to get to root causes.
All blood- red- stained fingers and pawses
And slicing the top-off
Is one way to pop-off
Prior to plunging in sharp pickling sauces.
Light moments its good to recall.
A latin teacher we'd stall
And hi-jack his teaching
By getting him reaching
For his story to read to us all.
Twas always and ever the same
That great classic of an age of big game
Nothing that made the ark
But that mysterious snark
Of non-person Lewis Carroll fame.
Oh the corruption of youth
Twas no innocence. The truth
For we knew not we lacked
For grammar and syntax.
It was just like pulling a tooth.
Time to slice the beetroot.. Finished the preparing rhubarb earlier.
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 7th September 2011
I shall confidently expect you to be hailed as the next Poet Laureate, Cass!
As you know, we on the FH board have several get-togethers in the summer, but our members would consider it infra dig to hurl sharp implements at each other. -
Message 31
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 8th September 2011
...but our members would consider it infra dig to hurl sharp implements at each other. Β
Blunt instruments (or mud pies) are usually more effective, raundsgirl.
I've always felt terribly sorry for the Rt. Rev. A.W. Blunt of whom it was said that "he had not only bumbled into a minefield, but had set it off." Poor old Blunt's address to his Diocesan Conference in December 1936 opened the press floodgates about Edward VIII and his intended marriage to the American lady.
The Blunt Instrument (was it Churchill who thought up that name for the unfortunate Bishop of Bradford?) always maintained that at the time of his speech he knew nothing at all about Wallis Simpson: he was simply worried about the new King's utter indifference to churchgoing.
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