“Quit while you’re behind.”
Another of mine, from August 6, 2004, inspired by entering the quotation that was published on August 1 2023.
“With his absolute faith in his own baseball eye, and his coaches’ ability to polish skills, [Earl] Weaver manages as though victory were an inevitability.”
Thomas Boswell How Life Imitates The World Series
Dolly “Parton writes songs, which is one artistic expression of storytelling — poetry adorned by the mathematics of music.... Preachers tell stories, too; stories about truths that change history. We preach the Word, and ‘in the beginning the Word and the Word was God.’ God is the first storyteller, and the angels the first song-tellers. A story endures to the extent that it conveys an enduring truth. That’s why so many songs are about love — desired, despairing, requited, unrequited, honoured, betrayed. Love is what most endures. The Jews taught the world about stories that make present now what God wrote in history, which is why their greatest collection of stories opens with ‘In the beginning.’ ‘Once upon a time’ is the usual way to do it, but doesn’t fit when time has not yet been created.”
Fr. Raymond J. de Souza in National Post December 24, 2022
“‘Life is short, so I shall eat butter,’ is India’s counterpart to ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’”
My source for this one is “H. Smith WRM” but what it means I do not know; I failed to record it in my Bibliography file. Possibly it’s a misprint for Hyrum W. Smith’s What Matters Most.
“Stories that get worse as they get longer.”
Me August 5, 2004 re some now-forgotten episode involving Dalton McGuinty and André Ouellet.
“I never had the same determination about baseball, and maybe that was my undoing. No matter how badly I wanted to get a base hit, I knew the other guy was trying to stop me. And I might be overmatched. In front of an audience, no one can stop me but myself.”
Bob Uecker and Mickey Herskowitz Catcher in the Wry
“Two weeks ago in the run-up to Halloween, I visited Salem, Massachusetts... I was bowled over by what I found in the Witch City: bigger crowds, longer lines and a wider and welcome array of merchandise geared toward many different religious traditions and ethnic identities. Amid the curious crowds in black capes and conical hats, bags overflowing with DIY spell kits and candles to enhance prosperity, I overheard the same question: Is magic really real? For me, the answer is yes. I am one of a million-plus Americans who – whether proudly, secretly or dabbling through the power of consumerism – practice some form of witchcraft. Witchcraft, which includes Wicca, paganism, folk magic and other New Age traditions, is one of the fastest-growing spiritual paths in America. In 1990, Trinity College in Connecticut estimated there were 8,000 adherents of Wicca. In 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau figure was 342,000.... The precise number of witches in America is difficult to determine because many practitioners are solitary and, either by choice or circumstance, do not openly identify as such.”
Antonio Pagliarulo, author of the forthcoming “The Evil Eye: The History, Mystery, and Magic of the Quiet Curse”, in an NBC “Think” “Culture & Lifestyle” piece 30/10/22
“Look Ma! No hands!”
The title of an autobiography by Allan Piper, Canada’s first double amputee of World War II, who lost both hands while training recruits to throw grenades in July 1942, cited by Dave Brown in Ottawa Citizen August 27, 1999