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FARMING --- FASHION
FAT --- FATE --- FATHERS

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FARMING

see: "COUNTRY LIFE"
see: "EARTH"
see: "PRAIRIE"
see: "FOOD & DRINK" for other related links
see: "OCCUPATIONS" for other related links


[The Waco Kid (Gene Wilder):]
You've got to remember that these are just simple
farmers. These are people of the land. The common
clay of the new west. You know — morons.
--Mel Brooks (b. 1926)
American actor, writer, and director.
"Blazing Saddles" [1974 film]

We plough the fields and scatter
The good seeds on the land,
But it is fed and watered
By God's almighty hand.
--Jane Montgomery Campbell (1817—1878)
English hymn-writer.
"We plough the fields, and scatter" [1861 hymn]

The corn is as high as an elephant's eye,
An' it looks likes it's climbin' clear up to the sky.
--Oscar Hammerstein II (1895—1960)
American songwriter.
"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" (song),
from the musical "Oklahoma" [1943]

Earth is here [Australia] so kind, that just tickle
her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest.
--Douglas Jerrold (1803—1857)
English playwright and journalist.
_A Man Made of Money_ [1849]

A farm is an irregular patch of nettles, bound by short term notes,
containing a fool and his wife who didn’t know enough to stay in
the city.
--S.J. Perelman (1904—1979)
American humorist and author.
"Acres and Pains" [1947]

Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
_Windsor Forest_, l. 39
(Ceres was the Roman goddess of the growth of food plants.)

"How do you do, my farmer friend?
"Howdy."
"Nice looking country you have here."
"Fer them that likes it."
"Live her all your life?"
"Not yit."
--Carl Sandburg (1878—1967)
American poet.
_The People, Yes_, 60 [1936]

And he gave it for his opinion, 'that whoever could make two
ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of
ground where only one grew before, would deserve better
of mankind, and do more essential service to his country,
than the whole race of politicians put together.'
--Jonathan Swift (1667—1745)
Anglo-Irish poet and satirist.
_Gulliver's Travels_ [1726], ch. 7 "Voyage to Brobdingnag"

Mr. Beecher's farm is not a triumph. It would be easier if he
worked it on shares with some one; but he cannot find any
body who is willing to stand half the expense, and not many
that are able. Still, persistence in any cause is bound to
succeed. He was a very inferior farmer when he first began,
but a prolonged and unflinching assault upon his agricultural
difficulties has had its effect at last, and he is now rising
fast from affluence to poverty.
--Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835—1910)
American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot.
"Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Farm" [1885]

Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it.
--Charles Dudley Warner (1829—1900)
American newspaperman, author, editor, and publisher.
_My Summer in a Garden_ [1870]

I know of no pursuit in which more real and
important services can be rendered to any
country than by improving its agriculture, its
breed of useful animals, and other branches
of a husbandman's cares.
--George Washington (1732—1799)
American general and commander-in-chief of the
colonial armies in the American Revolution [1775—1783]
and first president of the United States [1789—1797].
Letter to Sir John Sinclair, as quoted in
Thomas O'Connor (ed.) _Selections, From Several Literary Works [1824].

When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers,
therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
--Daniel Webster (1782—1852)
American orator and politician.
Remarks on the Agriculture of England at the
Boston, Mass. State House [13 January 1840].

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.
--John Greenleaf Whittier (1807—1892)
American poet.
"A Song of Harvest" [1858]

A green-thumbed young farmer from Leeds
Once swallowed a package of seeds.
In a month, his ass
Was covered with grass
And his balls were grown over with weeds.
--anon.


TOPICAL

Worrying about starving future generations won't
feed them. Food biotechnology will.
--Advertisement by the Monsanto corporation;
in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.)
_History in Quotations_, p. 951 [2004].
Cohan & Major add:
The company has developed genetically modified strains
of food crops, which, it claims, will produce much higher
yields than traditional varieties and avoid the use of insecticides
and chemical fertilizers. Public concern about the long-term
effects on existing plant life and human health has caused
serious resistance to Monsanto, including a five-year ban on
its commercial imports into the European Union. In Feb. 2003
Representative Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and
Means Committee, declared that if the EU did not lift the ban
there would be strong support in Congress for the US to
leave the WTO in 2005.

--

A farmer purchased an old, run-down, abandoned farm with plans
to turn it into a thriving enterprise. The fields were grown over with
weeds, the farmhouse was falling apart, and the fences were broken
down. During his first day of work, the town preacher stops by to
bless the man's work, saying, "May you and God work together to
make this the farm of your dreams!" A few months later, the preacher
stops by again to call on the farmer. Lo and behold, it's a completely
different place. The farm house is completely rebuilt and in excellent
condition, there is plenty of cattle and other livestock happily munching
on feed in well-fenced pens, and the fields are filled with crops planted
in neat rows.

"Amazing!" the preacher says. "Look what God and you have
accomplished together!"

"Yes, reverend," says the farmer, "but remember what the farm
was like when God was working it alone!"

--

-----

fecund [FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd], adjective:
1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation;
fruitful; prolific.
2. Intellectually productive or inventive.



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FASHION

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see: "APPEARANCE"
see: "CLOTHES"
see: "DRESS"
see: "THE BODY" for other related links


Fashion is made to become unfashionable.
--Coco Chanel (1883—1971)
French fashion designer.
In _Life_ (mag.) [19 August 1957].

Fashion is what you adopt when
you don't know who you are.
--Quentin Crisp [Denis Pratt] (1908—1999)
English writer.
Quoted in "Time" (mag.) [1981].

^

Elsie De Wolfe (1865—1950)
American fashion designer.

In 1933 Elsie traveled to Greece with some friends.
Like most visitors, Elsie found her first sight of the
Acropolis a stirring experience. 'It's beige. My color,'
she cried.

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andr้ Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

^

Chauncey Depew (1834—1928)
American lawyer, politician, and wit.

When Chauncey Depew was quite old, he was sitting
at dinner next to a young woman wearing a very low-
cut, off-the-shoulder dress. The old lawyer peered at
her d้colletage, leaned toward her, and asked, "My
dear, what is keeping that dress on you?"
"Only your age, Mr. Depew."

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andr้ Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

The custom and fashion of to-day will be the
awkwardness and outrage of to-morrow. So
arbitrary are these transient laws.
--Alexandre Dumas (1802—1870)
French novelist and dramatist.
Attributed in James Comper Gray
_The Biblical Museum: Old Testament_, vol. 3 [1878].

So soon as fashion is universal it is out of date.
--attributed to Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830—1916)
Austrian writer.

We laugh heartily to see a whole flock of sheep jump
because one did so. Might not one imagine that superior
beings do the same by us, and for exactly the same
reason?
--Fulke Greville (1554—1628)
English philosophical poet.
Attributed in Anna Athern _Here and Hereafter: or, The Two Altars _ [1861].

I don't design clothes. I design dreams.
--Ralph Lauren [Ralph Lifshitz] (b. 1939)
American fashion designer.
Quoted in "N.Y. Times" [19 April 1986].

That's, uh, quite a dress you almost have on.
--Alan Jay Lerner (1918—1986)
American playwright and lyricist.
"An American in Paris" [1951]
(Gene Kelly to Nina Foch in a bare-shoulder gown.)

All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely
variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted
desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
--Lin Yutang (1895—1976)
Chinese writer and philogist.
Quoted in "Reader's Digest" [1937].

Fashion is, for the most part, nothing but the ostentation of riches.
--John Locke (1632—1704)
English political and educational philosopher.
In James Wood _Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient
and Modern, English and Foreign Sources_, p. 102 [1899].

[During a 1956 visit to the President of Nigeria,
who was dressed in traditional robes:]
You look like you're ready for bed!
--Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (b.1921)
Consort of Queen Elizabeth II.
Quoted in "Did I say that?" compiled by
John Hind, _The Observer_ [21 June 2009].

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tired,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
_An Essay on Criticism_ [1711]

I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
--Gilda Radner (1946—1989)
American actress and comedienne.
In Kendall Farr _The Pocket Stylist_, p. 73 [2004].

I never expected to see the day when girls
would get sunburned in the places they
do today.
--Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935)
American humorist and actor.
Quoted in P.G. Wodehouse & Guy Bolton
_Bring on the Girls; The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy_ [1953].

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Much Ado About Nothing_, III, iii [1598—1599]

Have the courage to prefer propriety to
fashion — one is but the abuse of the other.
--Stanislaw I [Stanislaw Leszczynski] (1677—1766)
King of Poland.
_Ceuvres du philosophe bienfaisant_ [1763]

Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.
_Walden_ [1854]

-----

bedizen (verb) [be-'dI-z๊n]
To dress up in a flashy fashion, to deck
(oneself) out brazenly in gaudy clothes.

bling-bling (noun) ['bling 'bling]
(Slang) A self-consciously over-the-top and expensive style,
originally in jewelry, but also in clothes, cars and general life-
style.

de rigueur [duh ri-GUR], adjective:
Strictly required, as by etiquette, usage, or fashion.

decollete [dey-kol-TEY], adjective:
1. (Of a garment) low-necked.
2. Wearing a low-necked garment.

diaphanous (adj.) [dI-'ๆ-f๊-n๊s]
Thin and fragile, translucent, filmy or flimsy.

dishabille [dis-uh-BEEL], noun:
1. The state of being carelessly or partially dressed.
2. Casual or lounging attire.
3. An intentionally careless or casual manner.

frippery (noun)
Article of adornment worn for show: a showy article of
clothing or an adornment worn for display or effect.

gewgaw [G(Y)OO-gaw], noun:
A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble.
Ex.: Walk into almost any department store, and there
it is -- along with mounds of other gimmicky gadgets
and garish gewgaws that (no offense, Vanna) the world
can live without.

panoply (noun) ['pๆ-n๊-plee or -pli]
A full suit of armor; an impressive array of something rich and lustrous.

pizzazz (noun)
Energy and style: an attractive and exciting vitality,
especially when combined with style and glamor.
(informal)

prink [PRINGK], transitive verb:
To dress up; to deck for show.

tatterdemalion [at-uhr-dih-MAYL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn], noun:
A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.
adjective: Tattered; ragged.

tawdry [TAW-dree], adjective:
1. Gaudy, showy and cheap.
2. Low or mean; base: tawdry motives.
noun:
1. Cheap, gaudy apparel.



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FAT

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see: "THE BODY"


Portly G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton once remarked to the
exiguous George Bernard Shaw : "To look at you, anyone
would think there was a famine in England."

To which Shaw replied: "To look at you, anyone would think
you caused it."

--Quoted in "A Nasty Way With Words" by Alexander Theroux,
reviewing _Poisoned Pens_ ed. by Gary Dexter. In _The Wall
Street Journal_ [20 November 2009].

-

-

THE PERILS OF OBESITY

Yesterday my gun exploded
When I thought it wasn't loaded;
Near my wife I pressed the trigger,
Chipped a fragment off her figure.

'Course I'm sorry and all that,
But she shouldn't be so fat.

--Harry Graham (1874—1936)
British writer and journalist.
_Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes_ [1899]

-

Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot,
or herding together in turbulent mobs?
No, no, 'tis your lean, hungry men who
are continually worrying society, and
setting the whole community by the ears.
--Washington Irving (1783—1859)
American writer.
_A Knickerbocker’s History of New York_ [1809]

Underneath this flabby exterior is
an enormous lack of character.
--Oscar Levant (1906—1972)
American pianist and actor.
"Memoirs of an Amnesiac" [1965]

For a quick pick-me-up, take a plain yogurt,
a banana and a few ice cubes in a blender
and puree until smooth. Throw it at a skinny
person.
--attributed to Susan Maushart

Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat
man, just as they say there's a statue in every block of stone.
--George Orwell [Eric Blair] (1903—1950)
English novelist.
_Coming Up for Air_, pt. I, ch. 3 [1939]

It would be insensitive to say Dennis Brown and
Ted Washington were fat when they reported to
[football training] camp. Let's just say they were
over-served.
--Scott Osler,
in "San Francisco Chronicle," [11 August 1993].

Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat to be an astronaut.
--Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (b. 1921)
Consort of Queen Elizabeth II.
Said at the University of Salford to a 13-year-old aspiring
astronaut, who was wishing to fly the NOVA rocket;
"Gift of the gaffe: Prince Philip’s top ten embarrassing moments"
_Daily Mirror_ [14 December 2009].

-

For we are told that when a certain man was accusing
both of them to him, he [Julius Caesar] said he had no
fear of those fat and long-haired fellows, but rather of
those pale and thin ones [Brutus and Cassius].
--Plutarch (A.D. 46?—119?)
Greek philosopher and biographer.
_Parallel Lives_ "Anthony" sec. II

& note:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Julius Caesar_, I, ii [1599]

-

The reason fat men are good-natured
is they can neither fight nor run.
--attributed to Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919)
American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909].

-

The grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Henry IV, Part 2_, V, v [1596—1599]


He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath
put all of my substance into that fat belly of his.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Henry IV, Part 2_, II, i [1596—1599]

-

All the things I really like to do are
either immoral, illegal, or fattening.
--Alexander Woollcott (1887—1943)
American dramatic and literary critic.
Quoted in "Reader's Digest" [December 1933].

-

Here's to us, my good, fat friend,
To bless the things we eat;
For it has been full many a year,
Since we have seen our feet.

-

There once was a lady of Crete,
So enormously broad in the seat,
That one day in the ocean,
She caused such commotion,
That Admiral Byrd claimed her for America.
--anon.


TOPICAL

Newcomers to the United States are struck by
the amenities enjoyed by "poor" people. This
fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS
television broadcast a documentary, "People
Like Us," intended to show the miseries of
the poor during an ongoing recession. The
Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary,
with a view to embarrassing the Reagan
administration. But by the testimony of former
Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect.
Ordinary people across the Soviet Union
saw that the poorest Americans have TV sets,
microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at
the same perception that I witnessed in an
acquaintance of mine from Bombay who has
been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United
States. I asked him, 'Why are you so eager to
come to America?' He replied, 'I really want
to live in a country where the poor people
are fat.'
--Dinesh D'Souza (b. 1961)
American author.
"10 things to celebrate: Why I'm an anti-anti-American"

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collop (noun) ['kah-l๊p]
(1) A lump or slice of meat or fat;
(2) a fold of body fat.

corpulent [KOR-pyuh-luhnt], adjective:
Very fat; obese.

dewlap (noun) ['dju-lๆp]
A fold of loose skin hanging from the neck of some
bovines, reptiles and birds (turkeys and roosters).

embonpoint [ahn-bohn-PWAN], noun:
Plumpness of person; stoutness.

paunch (noun)
A protruding abdomen.
Synonyms: belly



FATE

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.

see: "ACCIDENT"
see: "CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES"
see: "CHANCE"
see: "CIRCUMSTANCES"
see: "DESTINY"
see: "LUCK"
see: "OPPORTUNITY"
see: "ACTIONS" for other related links


I returned, and I saw under the sun, that the race is not to the
swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men
of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
--Bible
"Ecclesiastes" 9:11

Destiny, n. A tyrant's excuse for crime
and a fool's excuse for failure.
--Ambrose Bierce (1842—1914)
American newspaperman, wit, and satirist.
_The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906]
(Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.)

When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.
--Dale Carnegie (1888—1955)
American writer and lecturer.
_How to Stop Worrying and Start Living_ [1944]

Every one is the son of his own works.
--Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616)
Spanish novelist.
_Don Quixote de la Mancha_ pt. 1, bk. iv, ch. xx [1605]

They are raised on high that they may
be dashed to pieces with a greater fall.
--Claudian (c. 370—c. 404)
Roman poet.
_In Rufinum_

Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow
Of slight beginnings to important ends.
--Sir William Davenant [also spelled D'Avenant] (1606—1668)
English poet, playwright, and theater manager.
"Gondibert", canto II [1650]

Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.
--Jacques Delille (1738—1813)
French poet.
"Malheur et Piti้", canto I [1803]

Everywhere man blames nature and fate,
yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his
character and passions, his mistakes and
weaknesses.
--Democritus of Abdera (c. 460 B.C.—c. 370 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
In Lotte H. Eisner _Fritz Lang_, p. 380 [1986].

-

A man's fate is his own temper; and according to that will be
his opinion as to the particular manner in which the course of
events is regulated. A consistent man believes in destiny — a
capricious man in chance.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874—1880].
"A Visit to a Celebrated Diplomatist" in _Vivian Grey_ [1827]


We make our own fortunes and we call them fate.
--Benjamin Disraeli (1804—1881)
British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 1874—1880].
_Miriam Alroy_ [1870]

-

Men are what their mothers made them.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_The Conduct of Life_ "Fate" [1860]

We choose our joys and sorrows
long before we experience them.
--Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931)
Lebanese poet.
_Sand and Foam_ [1926]

Sometimes a glance, a few casual words, fragments
of a melody floating through the quiet air of a summer
evening, a book that accidentally comes into hands,
a poem or memory-laden fragrance may bring about
the impulse which changes and determines our whole
life.
--Anagarika Govinda [Ernst Lothar Hoffman] (1898—1985)
German-born author & founder of the
Buddhist Order Arya Maitreya Mandala.
_The Way of the White Clouds_ [1966]

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes
of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental
and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human
events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a
person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of
coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his
life.
--Fulke Greville (1554—1628)
English philosophical poet.
_Maxims, Characters, and Reflections_, CXXI [2nd ed., 1757]

We are not permitted to choose the frame
of our destiny. But what we put into it is
ours.
--Dag Hammarskj๖ld (1905—1961)
Swedish diplomat; served as the
Secretary General of the U.N. [1953-1961].
_Markings_ [1955], tr. Leif Sj๖berg and W.H. Auden [1964]

Not to be deficient in this particular, the author
has provided himself with a moral — the truth,
namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation
lives into the successive ones.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804—1864)
American novelist and short-story writer.
_The House of the Seven Gables_ [1851], preface

A man's character is his fate.
--Heraclitus (c.535—475 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
_On the Universe_ (fragment 121)

Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
Finem di dederint.
(Do not try to find out — we're forbidden to know —
what end the gods have in store for me, or for you.)
--Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65—8 BC)
Roman poet.
_Odes_, bk. 1, # 11

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and
never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue
or of vice leaves its never so little scar. . . . Nothing
we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped
out.
--William James (1842—1910)
American philosopher.
_The Principles of Psychology_ [1890]

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
--Omar Khayyแm (1048—1131)
Islamic scholar, poet, and mathematician.
_The Rubแiyแt of Omar Khayyแm_ (FitzGerald's 1859 translation)

That's the way life goes, of course. A breeze comes up in Rhode
Island on a morning in March during the Civil War, and a Union
soldier home on leave goes into a park in Providence to fly a kite,
and a young woman sees the kite in the sky from her front stoop
a block away and wanders into the park, where she meets the
soldier and likes him, and they write letters to each other after
he goes back to his outfit, and they are married after the war,
and they have a son, who grows up and has a son, who grows
up and has a son, who is named Charles after the soldier. And
here I am. But I wouldn't be, if a Rhode Island day in 1864
had turned out calm, rather than breezy. I owe everthing to
the wind and to Providence.
--Charles Kuralt (1934—1997)
American journalist and broadcaster.
_Charles Kuralt's America_ [1995] "April: A Change of Plans"

By going a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping
to speak with a friend on the corner, by meeting
this man or that, or by turning down this street
instead of the other, we may let slip some impending
evil, by which the whole current of our lives would
have been changed. There is no possible solution
to the dark enigma but the one word, 'Providence.'
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807—1882)
American poet.
"Items of Interest" (Philadelphia) [Vol. V, no. 1, February 1883]

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable.
The only argument available with an east wind
is to put on your overcoat.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
In a speech in Birmingham, England [6 October 1884]
published in _On Democracy_ [1884].

The Orientals have another word
for accident; it is "kismet," — fate.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
Attributed in Charles Noel Douglas
_Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical_ [1917].

Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee
from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from
eternity spinning the thread of thy being.
--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121—180)
Roman emperor [161—180] and Stoic philosopher.
Quoted in Bertrand Russell
_History of Western Philosophy_ [1945].

-

"The Appointment in Samarra"
As retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933]

The speaker is Death:

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy
provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling,
and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by
a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled
me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your
horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to
Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his
horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and
as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down
to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to
me and said, Why did you make a threating gesture to my servant when
you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it
was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for
I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

-

We talk about fate as if it were something visited upon us;
we forget that we create our fate every day we live. And
by fate I mean the woes that beset us, which are merely
the effects of causes which are not nearly as mysterious
as we pretend. Most of the ills we suffer from are directly
traceable to our own behavior.
--Henry Miller (1891—1980)
American novelist and essayist.
_A Devil in Paradise_ [1956]

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.
--Napoleon I (1769—1821)
Emperor of France [1804—1815].
Attributed in Charles Noel Douglas
_Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical_ [1917].

When the man from Seriphus told him
[Themistocles] that he had not obtained
this honor by himself, but by the greatness
of his city, he replied, "You speak truth; I
should never have been famous if I had
been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been
of Athens."
--Plutarch (A.D. 46?—119?)
Greek philosopher and biographer.
_Life of Themistocles_

-

I cannot forget.

In May, 2001, the company I worked for the previous
three years collapsed, leaving me and about sixty
other engineers jobless in a badly shrunken market.
I spent the next five months struggling to get
interviews while husbanding my savings and my
sanity.

I got only one interview, from a Manhattan company.
Their VP of IT liked me, and would have hired me
on the spot, but there was a hiring freeze until their
second-quarter results were in, analyzed, and
understood. So I went home and waited.

One fine morning, there came a letter from that
company, offering me a position at a salary I could
not believe, nearly twice what I'd been earning at
my former place of business. I was sitting at my
desk with tears of relief running down my face,
when my elder daughter burst in and screamed,
"A plane just hit the World Trade Center!"

The company that had offered me the job was Cantor
Fitzgerald. They occupied floors 101 through 105 of
One World Trade Center. They lost almost 70% of
their employees that bright September morning.
Had their offer letter arrived two weeks earlier, I
would have been among them.

I cannot forget.

--Francis W. Porretto

-

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing
is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have
to give.
--Eleanor Roosevelt (1884—1962)
American human rights activist, diplomat, and
wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Essay in Edward P. Morgan (ed.) _This I Believe ..._ [1952].

-

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some
generations much is given. Of others much is expected.
This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with
destiny.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882—1945)
American Democratic statesman and President [1933—1945].
In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party National
Convention [June 1936].


Men are not prisoners of fate, but
only prisoners of their own minds.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882—1945)
American Democratic statesman and President [1933—1945].
Address to the Pan American Union [14 April 1939].

-

It is often a comfort in misfortune to know our own fate.
--Quintus Curtius Rufus (fl. 1st C. B.C.)
Roman historian.
_De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni_, IV. 10. 27.
In Kate Louise Roberts
_Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations_, p. 264 [1922]

Suppose . . . that Lenin had died of typhus in Siberia
in 1895 and Hitler had been killed on the western
front in 1916. What would the twentieth century
have looked like now?
--Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1917—2007)
American historian.
_The Cycles of American History_ [1986]

As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears
or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse
laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is
insensibility.
--Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC—65 A.D.)
Roman philosopher and poet.
In Maturin M. Ballou
_Treasury of Thought_ p. 446 [15th ed. 1894].

Cassius: Men at some time are masters of their fate:
The fault, dear Brutus, in not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
--William Shakespeare (1564—1616)
English dramatist.
_Julius Caesar_, I, ii [1599]

People are always blaming their
circumstances for what they are.
I don't believe in circumstances.
The people who get on in this
world are the people who get up
and look for the circumstances
they want, and, if they can't
find them, make them.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist
propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.]
_Mrs. Warren's Profession_, act II [1893, first performed in 1902.]

Wouldn't it be terrible to discover that life is indeed fair, and
all the terrible things that happen to us happen because we
really deserve them?
--attributed to J. Michael Straczynski (b. 1954)
American writer and television producer.

If you can't change your fate, change your attitude.
--Amy Tan (b. 1952)
American writer.
Interview with Eleanor Wachtel published in Wachtel's _Writers & Company_ [1993].

Man is man, and master of his fate.
--Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809—1892)
English poet.
"Geraint and Enid"

It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes
does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel
which works the whole mighty machinery of Fate, and
see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or
advance.
--William Makepeace Thackeray (1811—1863)
English novelist.
"Catherine: a Story", ch. VII published in Fraser's Magazine [August 1839].

-

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with
our own private opinion. What a man thinks of
himself, that it is which determines, or rather
indicates, his fate.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.
_Walden_ [1854]


Every human being is the artificer of his own fate. . .
Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in
ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have
sown.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.
_Journal_ [27 April 1854]

-

In historical events great men — so-called — are but
labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels,
they have the least possible connection with the event
itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act
of their own free-will, is in an historical sense not free
at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous
history, and predestined from all eternity.
--Leo Tolstoy (1828—1910)
Russian novelist.
_War and Peace_, pt. 9, ch. I [1869]

Enough of this! Advice helps only him who gives it, and that
only insofar as it lightens the burdens of conscience. In the
final event, you will do what fate and your breeding dictate,
and my advice will affect your future as much as a cherry
blossom falling into the river alters its course.
--Trevanian [pen name of Rodney Whitaker] (1931—2005)
American film scholar and writer.
_Shibumi_ [1979]

---

With the success of "Chantilly Lace," Richardson
took some time off from KTRM radio and joined
Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Ritchie Valens,
and Dion and the Belmonts; for a "Winter Dance
Party" tour.

On February 2nd, 1959, Buddy Holly chartered
a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new
Crickets band (Tommy Allsup and Waylon
Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. Richardson
came down with the flu and didn't feel
comfortable on the bus, so Waylon gave
his plane seat to him.

Valens had never flown on a small plane and
requested Allsup's seat. They flipped a coin,
and Ritchie called heads and won the toss.

In the early morning of February 3, following
a February 2nd performance at the Surf Ballroom
in Clear Lake, Iowa, the small four-passenger
Beechcraft Bonanza took off into a blinding snow
storm and crashed into Albert Juhl's corn field
several miles after takeoff at 1:05 a.m. The crash
killed Holly, Valens, Richardson and pilot Roger
Peterson. This event would become known as
"The Day the Music Died."

--anon.

& see:

The barnstorming rock 'n' roll tour is called The
Winter Dance Party, and the four finger-popping
boys from the Bronx, wearing pimp boots and
nylon shirts and slick suits like these heartland
kids have never seen before, are fourth on the
bill behind Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and
The Big Bopper. Dion and the Belmonts, they're
called; they've had a couple of hit records, but
they're not yet so big that the lead singer,
19-year-old Dion DiMucci, is really sure he
wants to come up with the $35 when Holly
asks if he wants to come along on a charter
flight to the next show. Thirty-five dollars is
the monthly rent Dion's folks pay for their
second-story walkup back home at 749 E.
183rd Street.
--C.J. Sulivan, "Pure Bronx Soul: Dion and The
Belmonts", in _Big Town Biography: Lives and
Times of the Century's Classic New Yorkers_ [1999].

-----

auspice (noun)
Omen: a sign or token for the future,
especially a happy or promising one.

ineluctable [in-ih-LUCK-tuh-buhl], adjective:
Impossible to avoid or evade; inevitable.

kismet [KIZ-met; -mit], noun:
Destiny; fate.



FATHERS

.
.

see: "HOME & FAMILY" for related links


I can't tell you what sadness, what pain it is for me never
to have known my father. ... If only I could look at him,
touch his face, see if he had eyebrows! Maybe in having
the male characters in my movies find each other, I'm
expressing the longing I feel to find my father and be
close to him.
--Mel Brooks (b. 1926)
American actor, writer, and director.
Quoted in Maurice Yacowar, _The Comic Art of Mel Brooks_ [1981].

A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or
abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons
could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.
--Marlene Dietrich [Marie Magdalene Von Losch] (1901—1992)
German-born film actress. Between 1943—1946 she
made more than 500 appearances before Allied troops.
Quoted in Dahlia Porter _All About Dad_ [2007].

Like father like son.
--Thomas Draxe (d. 1618)
English clergyman.
_Adages_ [1616]
Often credited as a Latin proverb.

The gods
Visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.
--Euripides (485?—406 B.C.)
Greek dramatist.
_Phrixus_, fragment 970

The night you were born, I ceased being my father's
boy and became my son's father. That night I began
a new life.
--Henry Gregor Felsen (1916—1995)
American writer.
_Letters To A Teen-Age Son_ [1962]

You don't have to deserve your mother's love.
You have to deserve your father's. He's more
particular.
--Robert Frost (1874—1963)
American poet.
In George Plimpton _Writers at Work: The Paris
Review Interviews; Second Series_, p. 25 [1963].

When Charles first saw our child Mary, he said all the
proper things for a new father. He looked upon the
poor little red thing and blurted, 'She's more beautiful
than the Brooklyn Bridge.'
--Helen Hayes (1900—1993)
One of the most popular American stage actresses of the 20th century.
In Nick Lyons _The Quotable Dad_, p. 10 [2004].

One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
--George Herbert (1593—1633)
English religious poet.
_Jacula Prudentum_ (Outlandish Proverbs) [1640]

If I'm more of an influence to your son
as a rapper than you are as a father . . .
you've got to look at yourself as a parent.
--Ice Cube (b. 1970)
American rap musician.
In "Rolling Stone" [4 October 1990].

Are you lost daddy, I asked tenderly.
Shut up, he explained.
--Ring Lardner [Ringgold Wilmer Lardner] (1885—1933)
American writer and satirist.
_The Young Immigrants, ch.10 [1920]

At forty-five,
What next, what next?
At every corner,
I meet my Father,
My age, still alive.
--Robert Lowell (1917—1977)
American poet.
"Middle Age" [1964]

My father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.
--attributed to Spike [Terence Alan] Milligan (1918—2002)
Irish novelist, poet, musician, and comedian.

Every generation revolts against its fathers
and makes friends with its grandfathers.
--Lewis Mumford (1895—1990)
American architectural critic, urban planner, and historian.
_The Brown Decades_ [1931]

My dad took me to Paris for the weekend. We had the
most amazing time. On the plane back to London, he
asked me, "Do you know why I took you to Paris—
only you and me?" And I said, "Why?" And he said,
"Because I wanted you to see Paris for the first
time with a man who would always love you."
--Gwyneth Paltrow (b. 1971)
American film actress.
_Parade Magazine_ [January 1999],
"It Was a Real Awakening for Me"

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our
competitive society, is that they want
their children to be a credit to them.
--Bertrand Russell (1872—1970)
British philosopher, mathematician, and Nobel laureate.
_Sceptical Essays_ [1928]
"Freedom versus Authority in Education"

He that by harshness of nature rules his family with
an iron hand is as truly a tyrant as he who misgoverns
a nation.
--Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C.—65 A.D.)
Roman philosopher and poet.
Attributed in _Sunday School Helper_, vol. XX, no. 8 [August 1889].

It doesn't matter who my father was;
it matters who I remember he was.
--Anne Sexton (1928—1974)
American poet who won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Diary [1 January 1972].

As long as I have been in the White House, I can't
help waking at 5 a.m. and hearing the old man at
the foot of the stairs calling and telling me to get
out and milk the cows.
--Harry S. Truman (1884—1972)
American Democratic statesman, President of the U.S. [1945—1953].
As quoted in Robert Donovan's _Conflict and Crisis:
The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948_ [1977].

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was
right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
--Charles Wadsworth (1814—1882)
American clergyman.
Attributed in "The Rotarian" [November 1990].

-

^

Vic Oliver (1898—1964) married Winston Churchill's daughter,
Sarah, in 1936 and they were divorced in 1945. Apparently, at
a dinner party at which Oliver was present, Churchill was asked
whom he most admired. Churchill replied, "Mussolini". When
asked why, he replied, "Because he had the good sense to
shoot his son-in-law!" (Count Ciano).

^


end page



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