Glen's Quotes Db (3173 total)

There was this magician of some repute who was hired to do his act aboard a cruise ship. He had been there for several years, and since the crowd was in continual change, he did the same act over and over. He enjoyed the good life in this sinecure, spending most his time out on the Promenade Deck working on his tan, not new tricks. One day the Captain bought a parrot, and over the months brought the parrot with him to see the nightly magic show. Being a smart parrot, the bird learned all the tricks as to where the cards, flower, ect. were hidden by the magician in his act. The bird would say, "the card is up his left sleeve, the flower is under the pot, he hid the money under his shoe..." Because the parrot would only take about a week to catch on to his magic tricks, the magician was *forced* to continually learn new ones, which was getting harder and harder by the day, and really cramping his "sun time." To put it mildly he HATED THE DARN PARROT, but since it was the Captain's he couldn't just weigh the bird down and deep six it. Late one night the engine room exploded and the ship sank within minutes. Miraculously, the magician found himself clinging to a timber, floating in the water at 0200 dark in the morning. Alas, he was the only one left alive! As the sun came up the next morning and he turned around what should be sitting 20 feet away on the opposite end of the log - his arch nemesis, the Parrot! They glared at each other and said nothing. This went on for three days and neither said a word, just glared. On the Fourth Day the Parrot finally broke the silence and said, "OK! I give up - what did you do with the ship!"

Men say, "How are we to act, what are we to teach our children, now that we are no longer Christians?" You see, gentlemen, how I would answer that question. You are deceived in thinking that the morality of your father was based on Christianity. On the contrary, Christianity presupposed it. That morality stands exactly where it did; its basis has not been withdrawn, for, in a sense, it never had a basis. The ultimate ethical injunctions have always been premises, never conclusions. Kant was perfectly right on that point at least, the imperative is categorical. Unless the ethical is assumed from the outset, no argument will bring you to it.

A liberal education...is the education which gives a man a clear, conscious view of his own opinions and judgment, a truth in developing them, and eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen; he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to impart himself; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a comrade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has s gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm. The art which tends to make a man all of this, is in the object which it pursues as useful as the art of wealth or the art of health, though it is less susceptible of method, and less tangible, less certain, less complete in its results. By: Cardinal Newman Source: Discourse No. VII as found in The Idea of a University, by John Henry

It is gruesome to watch modern 'historians' distort and invent facts to project the promiscuity, immorality and inconsistency of today's culture on the principled patriots of colonial America. One can only wonder if they simply cannot tolerate a good example. Too many historians have taken Mark Twain's comical quip, "There's nothing so disgusting as a good example," and turned it into a mission statement. By: John Ashcroft Source: Lesson from a Father to His Son, 1998, Thomas Nelson, pg 104

Moreover, when I recalled what dangers I had undergone on behalf of these people even in my earlier advocacy, I decided that the credit of my earlier service must be preserved with a new favor. Indeed, there is a general consensus that you undermine earlier benefits unless you compound them with additional ones, for however often people have been in debt to you, once you refuse them some one thing, they remember that thing alone that has been denied to them. [ancient testimony to the paradox of rising expectations]