 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Reviews |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
Reviews |
|
|
 . . . GENEROSITY see: "KINDNESS" for related links A large nose is the mark of a witty, courteous, affable, generous, and liberal man. --Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac (16191655) French satirist and dramatist. _The Other World: States and Empires of the Moon_, ch. 8 [1656] Generosity, to be perfect, should always be accompanied by dash of humor. --Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (18301916) Austrian writer. _Aphorisms_ [1880-1905] - Elvis [Presley] did not die with a fortune; he spent nearly all he made. The stories are legion: Elvis standing beside two daydreaming newlyweds in a Cadillac showroom. "Which one do you like?" he asks. They point and he says, "Get in, it's yours." Or the young Elvis, a skinny kid with ridiculous sideburns, brushed off by a salesman, going out to ask an elderly man washing down new models, "Caddy a good car?" The man nods. Elvis marches him up to the sales manager and says, "This gentleman sold me on that convertible over there, so I'm buying two, one for me and one for him. And he's to have the commission on both." Every Christmas he gave $1,000 each to 50 Memphis charities, but no one will ever know the number of people whose businesses he rescued, or the tornado victims to whom he sent house trailers or the destitute whose hospital bills he paid. He thought that's what money was for. --Lawrence Elliott _Reader's Digest_ [August 1993], "Where Elvis Lives" - He is base who receives favors and renders none. In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from who we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefits we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. Pay it away quickly in some sort. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Journals_ [1836] A man is sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps thro' fear of being thought to have but little. --Benjamin Franklin (17061790) American politician, inventor, and scientist. _Autobiography_ [1798] To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile? --Jean de La Bruyθre (16451696) French essayist and moralist. _Les Caractθres_ [1688] "Of the Court" Nothing is given so profusely as advice. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Reflections; or, Sentences and Moral Maxims_ [1678] Give what you have. To some one, it may be better than you dare think. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. Attributed in "Our Paper" (Concord Junction, Mass.) [23 October 1915]. Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear. --Horace Mann (17961859) American educator. Quoted in _Gems of Thought_ (Comp. by Charles Northend), p. 101 [1888]. I have granted you much that you asked: and yet you never cease to ask of me. He who refuses nothing, Atticilla, will soon have nothing to refuse. --Martial [Marcus Valerius Martialis] (38/41103) Roman poet. _Epigrams_ [98] bk. XII We'd all like a reputation for generosity, and we'd all like to buy it cheap. --Mignon McLaughlin (19131983) American journalist and author. _The Neurotic's Notebook_ [1963] [When asked by Edward R. Murrow who held the patent to his vaccine against polio:] Well the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? --Jonas Edward Salk (19141995) American physician and medical reseacher who developed the vaccine for polio. "See It Now" (TV show) [12 April 1955] Let him that hath done the good office conceal it; let him that received it disclose it. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. 65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. _On Benefits_, II If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be, by what he gives. --Bishop Robert South (16341716) English theologian and author. _Sermons Preached Upon Several Occasions_ V. I [1845, 4 vol. ed. pub. by Sorin & Ball] -- Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands free speaker-function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen. MAN: "Hello." WOMAN: "Honey, it's me. Are you at the club?" MAN: "Yes." WOMAN: "I am at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It's only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?" MAN: "Sure, go ahead if you like it that much." WOMAN: "I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new model. I saw one I really liked." MAN: "How much?" WOMAN: "$90,000." MAN: "OK, but for that price, I want it with all the options." WOMAN: "Great! Oh, and one more thing.....the house I wanted last year is back on the market. They're asking $950,000." MAN: "Well, then go ahead and give them an offer of $900,000. They will probably take it. If not, we can go the extra 50 thousand. It's really a pretty good price." WOMAN: "OK. I'll see you later! I love you so much!!" MAN: "Bye! I love you, too." The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in astonishment, mouths agape. Then he smiles and asks: "Anyone know who this phone belongs to?" ----- benefaction [BEN-uh-fak-shuhn; ben-uh-FAK-shuhn], noun: 1. The act of conferring a benefit. 2. A benefit conferred; especially, a charitable donation. largess [lar-ZHES; lar-JES; LAR-jes], noun: 1. Generous giving (as of gifts or money), often accompanied by condescension. 2. Gifts, money, or other valuables so given. 3. Generosity; liberality. magnanimous [mag-NAN-uh-muhs], adjective: 1. Noble in mind or soul; free from mean or petty feelings or acts. 2. Showing a generous spirit; generous in forgiving. munificent (adj.) Very generous in giving. syn: generous, magnanimous, munificent, bountiful  ;void(0)) GENETIC ENGINEERING . . see: "DISCOVERY" for related links People in the forefront of environmental causes are destroying experimental crops. That's not logical. That's Luddite. --Douglas Hurd (b. 1930) British politician. In "Sunday Times" [19 September 1999]. Students accept astonishing things happening in human genetics without turning a hair but worry about GM soya beans. --Steve Jones (b. 1944) English geneticist. In "Times Higher Education Supplement" [27 August 1999]. [Upon hearing that British scientists had successfully cloned a lamb:] We ought not to permit a cottage industry in the God business. --John Marchi (b. 1948) American politician. In "Guardian" [28 February 1997]. . . see: "ABILITY" see: "INSPIRATION" see: "ORIGINALITY" see: "TALENT" see: "KNOWLEDGE" for other related links see: "THE MIND" for other related links - [On "genius" in comedy:] Even Harold Lloyd, whose final clock-clinging minutes of "Safety Last" [1923] are the most audaciously funny on film, does not make Woody Allen's All-Star team: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Groucho and Harpo Marx and Peter Sellers. Mr. Allen had included Mae West, but called the next day and busted her down to "an enormously gifted performer like Bob Hope and Jack Benny, but not a genius." --Interview with Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (b. 1935) by Franz Lidz and Steve Rushin in "New York Times" [30 January 2000]. - To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. --Henri Frιdιrick Amiel (18211881) Swiss critic. _Journal_ [1856] - No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness. --Aristotle (384322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. Attributed by Seneca in "De Tranquillitate Animi" _Moral Essays_, section 17. & see: Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one. --E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (18991985) American essayist and literary stylist. "Lime" [1944] - Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. --Sir Max Beerbohm (18721956) English satirist and caricaturist. In obituary of music-hall comic Dan Leno _Saturday Review_ [5 November 1904]. Too intense contemplation of his own genius had begun to undermine his health. --Sir Max Beerbohm (18721956) English satirist and caricaturist. _Seven Men, and Two Others_ [1950] - Wit and humor belong to genius alone. --Miguel de Cervantes (15471616) Spanish novelist. "Don Quixote de la Mancha", pt. II, ch. iii [1615] A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, CCII [1821 ed.] Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. --Calvin Coolidge (18721933) American Republican statesman and President [19231929]. Attributed; in the program of a memorial service for Coolidge. Note: According to Fred R. Shapiro (ed.) in _The Yale Book of Quotations_, p. 173 [2006]: "Coolidge wrote this after his retirement for the New York Life Insurance Company, on whose board of directors he served." There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common. --Denis Diderot (17131784) French writer and philosopher. _On the Interpretation of Nature_, # 15 [1753] Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. --Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) Scottish-born writer of detective fiction. _The Valley of Fear_, ch. I [1915] - Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide. --John Dryden (16311700) English poet, critic, and dramatist. "Absalom and Achitophel" [1681] Genius must be born, and never can be taught. --John Dryden (16311700) English poet, critic, and dramatist. _Epistle to Congreve_ [1693] - ^^ George C. Scott is one of the few male geniuses I have ever worked with, the only one whom I have been awed by, the only one who makes me go, "I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. I wish I could buy some of that." Offstage, he is quiet and introverted. But at the same time he has more rage than anybody I know. And it works for him onstage. People come up to get him to sign autographs, and he dismisses them. He told me, "I don't like people." --Charles Durning (b.1923) American stage and film actor. In Myrna Katz Frommer & Harvey Frommer _It Happened on Broadway: An Oral History of the Great White Way_ [1998]. ^^ Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. --Thomas Alva Edison (18471931) American inventor. Quoted in "Washington Post" [10 May 1915]. With the stones we cast at them, geniuses build new roads for us. --Paul Eldridge (18881982) American educator, novelist, and poet. _Maxims for a Modern Man_ [1965] Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. --Edward Gibbon (17371794) English historian. _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, vol. 3 [17761788] Yet a mighty genius lies hid under this rough exterior. --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658 BC) Roman poet. _Satires_ bk. I. 3. 33. Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. --Elbert Hubbard (18591915) American editor, publisher, and author who died in the sinking of the "Lusitania". In "The Philistine" magazine, published [18951915], vol. 23, # 4 [Sept. 1906]. In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. --Robert Green Ingersoll (18331899) American politician and orator know as "The Great Agnostic." _Liberty in Literature_, lecture delivered in Philadelphia, Pa. [21 October 1890]. - There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. --Oscar Levant (19061972) American pianist and actor. Quoted in Cleveland Amory _Celebrity Register_, p. 369 [1959]. What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left. --Oscar Levant (19061972) American pianist and actor. Quoted in Ken Russel _The Times Book of IQ Tests_, p. 22 [2002]. - - Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together. --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (17421799) German scientist and drama critic. _Aphorisms_ [17791788] Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen. --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (17421799) German scientist and drama critic. Attributed in Herbert V. Prochnow _New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom_, p. 182 [1958]. - Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. Address at the Young Men's Lyceum, Springfield, Illinois [27 January 1838]. Good sense travels on the well-worn paths; genius, never. And that is why the crowd, not altogether without reason, is so ready to treat great men as lunatics. --Cesare Lombroso (18351909) Italian criminologist. _The Man of Genius_ [1891], preface [Of Ambrose Bierce:] Turn to ... "The Devil's Dictionary." There you will find the most brilliant stuff, first and last, that America has ever produced. There you will find the true masterpiece of the one genuine wit that These States have ever seen. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. [October 1918] The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. --Carl Sagan (19341996) American astronomer and author. _Broca's Brain_, ch. 5 [1979] [On first hearing Frιdιric Chopin's music:] Hats off, gentlemen a genius! --Robert Schumann (18101856) German composer. In "Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung" [December 1831]. What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. --Sir Walter Scott (17711832) Scottish novelist and poet. Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the August, 1871 meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society. There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. _De tranquillitate animi_ (On Tranquility of the Mind) 17 The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not also a man of honor. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish dramatist and critic. _The Doctor's Dilemma_ [1906 play] Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. --Dame Edith Sitwell (18871964) British poet and critic. _Taken Care Of: The Autobiography of Edith Sitwell_, ch. I [1965] My mother brought me up to be a genius, and she was one of the most successful women I've ever known. --Preston Sturges [Edmund Preston Biden] (18981959) American motion picture director, screenwriter, and playwright. Quoted by Eddie Bracken in Barry Norman _The Story of Hollywood_ [1988]. - When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. _Thoughts on Various Subjects_ [1711] Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book ["A Tale of a Tub"]. --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. In Sir Walter Scott's _Works of Swift_ [1814]. - [Remark to a New York City customs officer in January, 1882:] I have nothing to declare but my genius. --Oscar Wilde (18541900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. Quoted in Frank Harris _Oscar Wilde_ [1916]. - It appears to me that strong sense and acute sensibility together constitute genius. --anon. Published in _The New-York Mirror_ [30 April 1831]. ;void(0)) GENOCIDE . . see: "EVIL" for related links In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor ... There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons. --Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [19401945, 19511955]. _The World Crisis_, vol. 4 [1929] I herewith commission you to carry out all preparations with regard to . . . a *total solution* of the Jewish question in those territories of Europe which are under German influence. --Hermann Goering (18931946) German Nazi leader. Instructions to Heydrich [31 July 1941], in William L. Shirer _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ [1962]. - There are so many. It is going to be a meze*. There will be blood up to your knees ... Beautiful. Keep the good ones over there. Enjoy them. --General Ratko Mladic at Srebrenica, mid-July 1995; "Newsday", [8 August 1995]. In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 900 [2004]. Cohan & Major explain: General Mladic, head of the Bosnian Serb forces, presided over an orgy of rape and the massacre of up to 8,000 men and boys in the Muslim town of Srebrenica. The episode was the worst of its kind in Europe since the end of World War II and determined the West to intervene militarily to bring the war in Bosnia to an end. Mladic and his 'president', Radovan Karadzic, were indicted for genocide and eight years later were still being hunted down. *Meze is Turkish for a long feast of many small dishes. & see: "Lessons of Srebrenica" _The Wall Street Journal_ [11 July 2005] Ten years ago today, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic entered the Bosnian Muslim town of Srebrenica, then being defended by Dutch peacekeepers. General Mladic made three demands: that the townsmen surrender their weapons; that all males between the ages of 12 and 77 be separated out for "questioning"; and that the rest of the population be expelled to Muslim areas. Within two days, 23,000 women and children had been deported. Another 5,000 Muslim men and boys who had taken refuge on a nearby Dutch base were also delivered to the Mladic forces. As we now know, most of the people surrendered by the Dutch to the Serbs were slaughtered, as were more than 2,000 others, bringing the estimated tally of the Srebrenica massacre to 7,200. Yet the scale of the atrocity alone is not why we remember it. We remember because the men of Srebrenica were betrayed by their ostensible protectors, and that carries some lessons for today. The first concerns the effectiveness of the United Nations. The U.N. began its involvement in the Balkans with an arms embargo that was supposed to apply to all sides equally, but which effectively left Bosnia's Muslims ill-defended against better equipped Serbs, who had the backing of the Belgrade government run by Slobodan Milosevic. That was followed by the U.N.'s disastrous decision to establish "safe areas" around several threatened ethnic enclaves, including Sarajevo and Srebrenica. According to a 1993 U.N. Secretariat report, safe areas would have the benefits of limiting "loss of life and property, deterring aggression, demonstrating international concern and involvement, setting the stage for political negotiations and facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aide." From the start, however, it was unclear where the U.N. soldiers to protect the enclaves would come from; then-President Clinton had ruled out the deployment of U.S. ground troops. It was also unclear whether the U.N. soldiers in safe areas were actually authorized to use force to defend the people in their care. Worst of all, the price Muslims paid for U.N. protection was to abandon their weapons, which they did within a week of the safe areas' creation. There was also the role played by the Europeans. As the Balkans crisis took hold in the early 1990s, the foreign representative of the European Community, a man named Jacques Poos, declared that "the hour of Europe has come." This was supposed to be a new and decisive Europe, unshackled from its Cold War subservience to the U.S. Instead, Europeans alternated between half-measures and attempts at negotiation with the Serbs, even as they exposed thousands of their own soldiers to risk in futile operations. When Margaret Thatcher, by then a former prime minister, called Serb atrocities "evil" and said "humanitarian aid is not enough," her views were dismissed by British Defense Minister Malcolm Rifkind as "emotional nonsense." Finally, there was the Clinton Administration, which had come to office pledging to reverse the first Bush Administration's appeasement of the "butchers of Belgrade." Today, most people remember the successful diplomatic efforts to end the Bosnian war with the 1995 Dayton Accord, as well as its successful military intervention in Kosovo in 1999. But Mr. Clinton allowed the Balkans to bleed for three years before he "did something." He let the U.N. and Europe take the lead and was frequently heard musing about the ancient roots of the Balkans conflict, which supposedly made it intractable and beyond the reach of the United States to repair. What's remarkable is that, when the U.S. did intervene for example, with a limited bombing campaign in 1995 it achieved fast and decisive results. Had Mr. Clinton honored his campaign pledges, he could have saved thousands of Bosnian lives and almost certainly averted the massacre at Srebrenica. If American policy makers want to avoid facing another Srebrenica on their watch, they must never let the U.N. determine the mission. Allowing the Europeans to "take the lead" is also a bad idea. Above all, Srebrenica is what happens when Western policy makers reject taking pre-emptive measures against gathering dangers, so that by the time the dangers are obvious it is too late to do something. It has become trendy in certain circles to speak of "No More Srebrenicas," as well as "No More Rwandas" and "No More Darfurs." If these people really believe the slogan, then the policy to make it work already has a name. It's called the Bush Doctrine. - While a people are gassed, the world is largely silent. There are reasons for this. Iraq's great oil wealth, its military strength, a desire not to upset the delicate negotiations seeking an end to the Iran-Iraq war. Silence, however, is complicity. A half century ago, the world was silent as Hitler began a campaign that culminated in the near extermination of Europe's Jews. We cannot be silent to genocide again. --Senator Claiborne Pell, 1988; in M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, pp. 939-40 [2004]. Cohan & Major add: Senator Pell was speaking of the massacre by Saddam Hussein's dictatorship of some 5,000 Kurdish civilians in the township of Halabja in northern Iraq in March 1988 by means of chemicals sprayed from aircraft. His Prevention of Genocide Act was termed 'premature' and 'counter-productive' by a Reagan White House, which had backed Iraq against Iran in the war between them that raged throughout most of the 1980s. - I wish to speak about the incidents in the then Ottoman empire, particularly in the spring of and throughout 1915, that led, I hope indisputably, to the planned, calculated genocide of the Christian community, which consisted principally of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. I shall seek to persuade my right hon. Friend that the time has finally come for Her Majesty's Government to join so many other countries, Parliaments and legislatures in recognising the genocide that occurred in that year. I hope that it will be comparatively uncontentious to state a few basic facts. One and a half million Armenian residents of the former Ottoman empire died between 1915 and 1923 as a result of calculated genocide. I hope that it is not contentious to say that 3.5 million of the historic Christian population of Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks then living in the Ottoman empire had been murdered-starved to death or slaughtered- or exiled by 1923. I hope that those are not contentious points. I hope that no one would seek to deny that the process started on 24 April 1915 in Constantinople, where 1,000 Armenians were identified, taken from their homes and murdered. I hope that it is not contentious to reaffirm that 300,000 Armenian males were then conscripted into the Turkish army, unarmed and then murdered, and that death marches into the Syrian desert took place. --Stephen Pound (b. 1948) English politician. Speech in Parliament [7 June 2006]. - . . see: "CIVILITY" for related links The rule in carving holds good as to criticism: never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon. --Charles Buxton (18231871) English author. _Notes of Thought_, # 351 [1873] An able man shows his Spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. --Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (16941773) British writer and politician. Quoted in _Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son_, vol. 3 [1827] (Pub. by Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope). The gentleman calls attention to the good points in others; he does not call attention to their defects. The small man does just the reverse of this. --Confucius (551479 B.C.) K'ung Ch'iu, Chinese philosopher. _The Confucian Analects_ XII, 16 - He was Robert Tyre Jones, Jr., a weekend golfer but the best golfer of his time, some people think the best of all time. But had a grace and charm on and off the course that, curiously, made him the idol of two continents in a very brash time, and that to people who didn't know a putter from a shovel. His universal appeal was not as a golfer. What then? The word that comes to mind is an extinct word: a gentleman, a combination of goodness and grace, an unwavering courtesy, self-deprecation, and consideration for other people. This fetching combination, allied to his world supremacy in one sport, was what made him a hero in Scotland and England as much as in the Midwest and his native Georgia. Once, in a national championship, he drove his ball into the woods. He went after it alone, and, in standing to the ball, he barely touched it. He came out of the woods, signaled his fault, penalized himself one stroke and by one stroke lost the championship. When he was praised for this and similar acts of sportmanship, he was genuinely disgusted. "You might as well," he said, "praise a man for not robbing a bank." In his middle forties he was paralyzed by a rare disease, and a friend asked him for the medical outlook. "I will tell you privately," he said "it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse all the time, but don't fret. Remember, we 'play the ball where it lies,' and now let's not talk about this, ever again." And he never did. So what we're talking about is not the hero as golfer but something that America hungered for and found: the best performer in the world who was also the hero as human being, the gentle, chivalrous, wholly self-sufficient male. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (19082004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - Propriety of manners and consideration for others are the two main characteristics of a gentleman. --attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. A butcher was robbed in a very gallant manner by a woman well mounted on a side saddle. ... She presented a pistol to him, and demanded his money; he being amazed at her behaviour told her he did not know what she meant, when a gentleman coming up, told him he was a brute to deny the lady's request, and if he did not gratify her desire immediately, he would shoot him through the Head; so he gave her his watch and 6 guineas. --Gentleman's Magazine" [November 1735], as quoted in Frank Muir, _The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose_ [pub. 1990, 2002 ed.]. The gentleman is solid mahogany; the fashionable man is only veneer. --Josiah Gilbert Holland (18191881) American novelist, poet, and editor of "Scribners Magazine." _Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects_ [1873] "Fashion" Strong men can always afford to be gentle. Only the weak are intent on 'giving as good as they get.' --Elbert Hubbard (18591915) American editor, publisher, and author who died in the sinking of the "Lusitania." 'Courtesy as an Asset' (pamphlet), in Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings, pt. 1. [To his nurse, who begged him to make her son a gentleman:] A gentleman I could never make him, though I could make him a lord. --James I (15661625) King of Scotland [as James VI 15671625], and the first Stuart king of England [16031625]. Quoted in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ [1861]. - [On seeing Lincoln doff his hat to a Negro who had just greeted him on a Washington street with the same courtesy:] Mr. President, "[why] would you take off your hat to a ragged old rapscallion like that?" Lincoln: (with a smile) "My friend, I allow no man to be a greater gentleman than I am." --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. As quoted in _Lincoln Wit_ [1958], compiled by Brant House. - Gentlemen prefer blondes. --Anita Loos (18931981) American novelist and Hollywood screenwriter. Title of comic novel [1925]. Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121180) Roman emperor [161180] and Stoic philosopher. _Meditations_, trans. C. R. Haines It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. --John Henry Newman (18011890) English theologian and leader of the Oxford movement, later Cardinal. _The Idea of a University_ [1873], Discourse V, pt. VIII [To his dog who had knocked over a candle and set fire to his papers:] Oh Diamond! Diamond! Thou little knowest the mischief thou has done! --Sir Isaac Newton (16421727) English mathematician and physicist. Quoted in "The Scots Magazine" [October 1772]. This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him. --William L. Phelps (18651943) American educator, journalist, and man of letters. Attributed in _The Law Society Journal_, vol. 10 (pub. by Law Society of Massachusetts) [1942]. I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. --Leo Rosten (19081997) Polish-born American writer and social scientist. _Captain Newman, M.D._ [1963] The only moral lesson which is suited for a child the most important lesson for every time of life is this: 'Never hurt anybody.' --Jean Jacques Rousseau (17121778) French philosopher and novelist. _Emile; or, Treatise on Education_ [1762] Courage is by no means incompatible with tenderness. On the contrary, gentleness and tenderness have been found to characterize the men, not less than the women, who have done the most courageous deeds. --Samuel Smiles (18121904) Scottish author. _Character_, ch. V "Courage" [1871] The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known. For a man by nothing is so well betrayed, As by his manners. --Edmund Spenser (1552/531599) English poet. _The Faerie Queen_, bk. VI, canto III [15901596] Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are frequent; but a true gentleman is what one seldom sees. --Sir Richard Steele (16721729) Irish-born essayist and dramatist. Quoted in Raymond Macdonald Alden _Readings in English Prose of the Eighteenth Century_, p. 156 [1911]. The only infallible rule we know is, that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman never is one. --Robert Smith Surtees (18031864) English sporting journalist and novelist. _Ask Mamma, or, The Richest Commoner in England_, ch. I [1858] - What is it to be a gentleman? Is it to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be brave, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful outward manner? Ought a gentleman to be a loyal son, a true husband, and honest father? Ought his life to be decent his bills to be paid his taste to be high and elegant his aims in life lofty and noble? --William Makepeace Thackeray (18111863) English novelist. _The Book of Snobs_ [1848] "The Snob Royal" A gentleman is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper and each make out his list. --William Makepeace Thackeray (18111863) English novelist. Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_ p. 200 [15th ed. 1894]. - Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions, which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, they are insultingly supporting their own superiority. --Mary Wollstonecraft (17591797) English feminist. _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_, ch. 4 [1792] end page | GAMBLING - GARDENS | GARFIELD - GENERATION GAP | GENEROSITY - GENTLEMEN | GEOGRAPHY - GERSHWIN | GHOSTS - GLASSES | GLOBALIZATION - GOALS | GOD | GOLF | GOOD DEEDS - GOODBYES | GOODNESS - GOVERNMENT | GRACE - GRASS | GRATITUDE | GRAVEYARDS - GREED | GREETINGS - GROWING | GROWING OLDER - PAGE 1 (A-L) | GROWING OLDER - PAGE 2 (M-Z) | GROWING UP - GULLIBLE | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
||