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BENNY (JACK) --- BEREAVEMENT
BEST (DO YOUR) --- BETRAYAL --- BIBLE (THE)

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Jack Benny [Benjamin Kubelsky] (1894-1974)
American entertainer.

see "HUMOR" for related links
see "PEOPLE" for related links


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HOLDUP MAN: Your money or your life? Come on, hurry up!
BENNY: I'm thinking it over.
--Jack Benny [Benjamin Kubelsky] (1894-1974)
American entertainer {his signature joke}


Jack Benny played Mendelsson last night.
Mendelsson lost.
--Jack Benny [Benjamin Kubelsky] (1894-1974)
American entertainer

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BEREAVEMENT

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see "DEATH" for related links


Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life
has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just
completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark
is a smile.
--Julie Burchill (1959— )
English journalist.
_Independent_, London, [5 December 1989]

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth —
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.
--Emily Dickinson (1830—1886)
American poet.
"The Bustle in a House" [c. 1866]

Woman much missed, how do you call to me, call to me.
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you have changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
--Thomas Hardy (1840—1928)
English novelist and poet.
"The Voice" [1914]

Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience
of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows
courtship or as autumn follows summer.
--C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (1898—1963)
British scholar and novelist.
"A Grief Observed" [1961]

A man's dying is more the survivors'
affair than his own.
--Thomas Mann (1875—1955)
German novelist.
_The Magic Mountain_ [1924]

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892—1950)
American poet.
"Time does not bring relief"

I can't think of a more wonderful thanksgiving for the
life I have had than that everyone should be jolly at
my funeral.
--Louis Mountbatten (1900—1979)
British war hero.
In Richard Hough _Mountbatten_ [1980].

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for
words left unsaid and for deeds left undone.
--Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811—1896)
American writer and philanthropist.
[Sister of Henry Ward Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher.]
_Little Foxes_ [1865], ch. 3

He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him: liked it not, and died.
--Henry Wotton (1568—1639)
English poet and diplomat.
"Upon the Death of Sir Albertus Moreton's Wife" [1651]

Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an
injury to the living, and the dead know it not.
--Xenophon (c.430—352 B.C.)
Athenian historian.




BEST (DO YOUR)

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see "SUCCESS" for related links


Try to be the best of what you are, even
if what you are is no good.
--Ashleigh Brilliant (1933— )
British-born American writer and artist.

-

I had applied for the nuclear submarine program, and
Admiral Rickover was interviewing me for the job. It was
the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a
large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and
he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss.
Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most
at the time current events, seamanship, music,
literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery and he
began to ask me a series of questions of increasing
difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I
knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen.

He always looked right into my eyes, and he never
smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat.

Finally, he asked a question and I thought I could
redeem myself. He said, 'How did you stand in your
class at the Naval Academy?' Since I had completed
my sophomore year at Georgia Tech before entering
Annapolis as a plebe, I had done very well, and I
swelled my chest with pride and answered, 'Sir, I
stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!' I sat back to
wait for the congratulations, which never came.
Instead, the question: 'Did you do your best?' I
started to say, 'Yes, sir,' but I remembered who
this was and recalled several of the many times at
the Academy when I could have learned more about our
allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth.
I was just human. I finally gulped and said, 'No, sir,
I didn't always do my best.'

He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his
chair around to end the interview. He asked one final
question, which I have never been able to forget or to
answer. He said, 'Why not?' I sat there for a while,
shaken, and then slowly left the room.

--Jimmy Carter (1924— )
American Democratic statesman, President [1977—1981].
_Why Not The Best?_ [1975]

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Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things
it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and
persevere, will come much nearer to it than those
whose laziness and despondency make them give
it up as unattainable.
--Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (1694—1773)
British writer and politician.
In Charles Strachey {ed.}
_The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son_ [1901].

Quod est, eo decet uti: et quicquid agas, agere pro viribus.
(What one has, one ought to use; and whatever he does he
should do with all his might.)
--Marcus Tullius Cicero (106—43 BC)
Roman orator and statesman.

And when I lie in the green kirkyard,
With the mould upon my breast,
Say not that 'She did well — or ill,'
Only, 'She did her best.'
--Dinah Mulock Craik (1826—1887)
English writer and poet.
{Lines from one of her poems repeated at her eulogy.}

The *probability* that we may fall in the struggle
*ought not* deter us from the support of a cause
we believe to be just; it *shall not* deter me.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865].
"The Sub-Treasury" speech in the House of
Representatives at Springfield, Illinois [26 December 1839].

The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic
of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull
his weight.
--Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].
Speech in New York City [11 November 1902].

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The Declaration of Independence states unequivocally
that all men are created equal. Yet every day I
find reason to believe this to be untrue. I run in
a race and half the field beats me. I attend a
seminar and can't follow the reasoning of the
speaker. I read a book and I am unable to
understand what is evident to others. Daily I am
instructed in my deficiencies. I do something,
physical or mental, and realize how far I fall short
of what other people accomplish.

Despite the Declaration, we are apparently not born
equal. I cannot aspire to win the Boston Marathon.
I most certainly will not receive the Nobel Prize
for literature. I am surrounded by people who know
more, do more, and make more than I do. But, like
many others, I identify myself with my performance.
I become my marathon time. I become my latest book.
I become the last lecture I gave. . . .

But I am more than a body-mind complex. I am a soul
as well. I share with everyone on this planet one
power infinitely more important than talent:
willpower. In this power of the soul, all of us are
created equal. . . .

The will considers the question, Will you or won't
you have it so? And in that decision you can be the
equal of anyone else. "Effort is the measure of a
man," wrote [William] James. How well we know that.
I am never content with contentment. I am uneasy
when things go easy.

"Don't take things easy," said a great physician,
"take things hard." Doing one's absolute best
becomes the criterion.

--George Sheehan, M.D. (1918—1993)
_Personal Best_ [1989], "The Many Levels of Motivation"

-

I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery
at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: “Here lies Jack Williams.
He has done his damnedest.” I think that is the greatest
epitaph a man can have — when he gives everything that
is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you
can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do … I
studied the lives of great men and famous women;
and I found that the men and women who got to the
top were those who did the jobs they had in hand,
with everything they had of energy, enthusiasm and
hard work.
--Harry S. Truman (1884—1972)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1945—1953].
In Meiji Stewart
_Shoot for the Moon_, p. 150 [2000].

Use what talents you possess: the woods would be
very silent if no birds sang there except those that
sang best.
--Henry Van Dyke (1852—1933)
American clergyman, educator, and author.

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Let others cheer the winning man,
There's one I hold worth while;
'Tis he who does the best he can,
Then loses with a smile.
Beaten he is, but not to stay
Down with the rank and file;
That man will win some other day,
Who loses with a smile.
--anon.

-----

quintessence (noun) [kwin-'tes-κns]
The purest essence of something.
quintessential (adj.)



BETRAYAL

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see: "TRUST"
see "IMMORALITY" for other related links


Whereas you send unto me, willing me to confess
a truth, and so to obtain your favour ... let not your
grace ever imagine that your poor wife will ever be
brought to acknowledge a fault where not so much
as a thought ever proceeded. And to speak a truth,
never prince had wife more loyal in all duty and in
all true affection than you have ever found in Ann
Bullen — with which name and place I could willingly
have contented myself, if God and your grace's
pleasure had been so pleased.
--Anne Boleyn [also spelled Bullen] (1507?—1536)
Second wife of King Henry VIII of England
and mother of Queen Elizabeth I.
(To Henry VIII 'from my doleful prison in
the Tower, this sixth of May, 1536.')

Be certain that he who has betrayed
thee once will betray thee again.
--Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741—1801)
Swiss writer, Protestant pastor, and founder of physiognomics.

Never, never pin your whole faith on any human
being; not if he is the best and wisest in the whole
world. There are lots of nice things you can do
with sand, but do not try building a house on it.
--C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (1898—1963)
British scholar and novelist.
_Mere Christianity_ [1952], Book 4, Chapter 7

If I cannot with my blind eyes see
That to betray or deny my brother
Is but to diminish me
Then you may pity me.
--Beah Richards (1920—2000)
American actress, poet, playwright, and author.
_A Black Woman Speaks and Other Poems_ [1974],
"The Liberal," Stanza 11

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Et tu, Brute? (You too, Brutus?)
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Julius Caesar_ [1599], act 3, sc.1


This was the most unkindest cut of all.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Julius Caesar_ [1599], act 3, sc. 2, l. 185

-

Most people sell their souls, and live with
a good conscience on the proceeds.
--Logan Pearsall Smith (1865—1946)
American-born man of letters.
_Afterthoughts_ [1931], "Other People"

^

When Vera Czermak learned that her husband had
betrayed her, she decided she would end it all by
jumping out of her third-story window. Some time
later she awoke in the hospital to discover that she
was still alive, having landed upon her husband. Mr.
Czermak, however, was dead.
-- in John Train
_True Remarkable Occurrences_

^

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perfidy (noun)
Deceitful breach of faith or betrayal of trust.

recreant (adj.) ['re-kri-yκnt]
1. Disloyal, unfaithful, apostate
2. Cowardly, faint-hearted, craven.
recreancy & recreance (nouns)



BIBLE (THE)

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see "RELIGION" for related links


Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and
man's obligations to God would be unchanged.
He would have the same path to tread, only
his lamp and his guide would be gone; he would
have the same voyage to make, only his
compass and chart would be overboard.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister;
[brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.]

Any number of people assume that the Bible says that Eve ate
an apple, or that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. Yet the Bible
never says a word about whales or apples. In the former case it
refers to a fish, which might imply any sort of sea-monster; and
in the second, to the essential experience of fruition, or tasting
the fruit of the tree, which is obviously more general and even
more mystical . . . The things that look silly now are the first
rationalistic explanations rather than the first religious or
primitive outlines. If those original images had been left in
their own natural mystery of dark fruition or dim monsters
of the deep, nobody would have quarrelled with them half
so much . . . But it is unfair to turn round and blame the Bible
because of all these legends and jokes and journalistic allusions,
which are read into the Bible by people who have not read
the Bible.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.
"The Bible and the Sceptics,"
The Illustrated London News, 20 April 1929.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in
every district — all studied and appreciated as they merit
— are the principal support of virtue, morality and civil
liberty.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.

If you take the cruel passages, the verses that
inculcate eternal hatred, verses that writhe and
hiss like serpents, you can make a creed that
would shock the heart of a hyena. It may be that
no book contains better passages than the New
Testament, but certainly no book contains worse.
Below the blossom of love you find the thorn of
hatred; on the lips that kiss, you find the poison
of the cobra. The Bible is not a moral guide.
--Robert Green Ingersoll (1833—1899)
American politician and orator know as "the great agnostic."

I believe the Bible is the best gift God
has ever given to man. All the good of
the Savior of the world is communicated
to us through the Book.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865].
"Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon
Presentation of a Bible," [7 September 1864] (Collected Works VII, 542).

Why do they put the Gideon Bibles only in the
bedrooms, where it's usually too late, and not
in the barroom downstairs?
--Christopher Morley (1890—1957)
American journalist, novelist, and poet.
_Contribution to a Contribution_

One had better put on gloves before reading
the New Testament. The presence of so much
filth makes it very advisable.
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844—1900)
German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries,
the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness,
with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more
consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of
God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and
brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I
detest everything that is cruel.
--Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (1737—1809)
English-American writer and political pamphleteer.
"Examination of the Old Testament"
_Age of Reason_ [1794]

The rivers of America will run with blood filled to
their banks before we will submit to them taking
the Bible out of our schools.
--Billy Sunday [William Ashley Sunday] (1862—1935)
American evangelist.
In George Seldes' _The Great Thoughts_ [1985],
revival meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania [1912].

The Bible is a warm letter of affection from a parent to a
child; and yet there are many who see chiefly the severer
passages. As there may be fifty or sixty nights of gentle
dews, in one summer, that will not cause as much remark
as one hailstorm of half an hour, so there are those who
are more struck by those passages of the Bible that
announce the indignation of God than by those that
announce His affection.
--Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832—1902)
American clergyman.

The reason why we find so many dark places in the Bible
is, for the most part, because there are so many dark
places in our hearts.
--Friedrich August Tholuck (1799—1877)
German theologian.

The thing is, that the Bible, whether you consider
it as a collection of fables, transmuted through the
golden mists of an elder time, or as a system of
ethics, or as a profession of faith, is the most
convincing and comprehensive record of human
experience and aspiration that exists in the world.
--John W. Thomason, Jr. (1893—1944)
_American Mercury_ [January 1937], "The Best Best-Seller"

--

"You threw out a _Bible?_"

"Yeah, well, it was really old and
bulky, it weighed a ton, and the
printing was so crude I couldn't read
it — some publisher named Gutenberg."

"You threw out a _Gutenberg_ Bible?
They're terribly valuable."

"Well, THIS one wouldn't have been
valuable — some jerk named Luther
had scribbled all over it..."


end page



| BABIES - BARTENDERS | BASEBALL | BASTARDS - BEATLES (THE) | BEAUTY | BED - BEGINNINGS | BEHAVIOR - BELIEF | BENNY (JACK) - BIBLE | BICYCLES - BIRDS | BIRTH - BLAIR (TONY) | BLAME - BLOGGING | BLONDES - BOOK BURNING | BOOKS | BOOMERS (THE) - BOXING | BOYS - BREAKING UP | BREASTS - BRITAIN | BROADWAY - BUBBLES (ECONOMIC) | BUGS BUNNY - BUREAUCRACY | BURMA SHAVE - BUSYBODIES |
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