In some ways I can’t believe I’m 68 years old. When did that happen? In other ways, I feel 168 years old. Usually at the end of the day. Then again, I have such great memories of my childhood that with very little effort I can go back in time and remember what it was like, how it felt, to be…
“The work of memory collapses time.”
“My childhood in Liverpool was filled with music, laughter, and a strong sense of community. Those early experiences shaped who I am today and continue to inspire my music ...”
“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken.”
“Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. ... In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.”
“You can’t get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
“Dear Jackie, While the hand of fate made Jack and me political opponents, I always cherished the fact that we were personal friends from the time we came to the Congress together in 1947.”
I spend the most enjoyable time of each day writing about a fictitious pair of 12-year-olds who love to read — two kids that happen to be runaway orphans who meet while hiding in, of course, a library.
I now spend the most enjoyable time of each day writing about a fictitious pair of 12-year-olds who love to read — two youngsters that happen to be runaway orphans who meet while hiding in, of course, a library. There’s more to the story than these new friends, one a boy and the other a girl…
My father, Daniel Fredrick Hennessy, God rest his soul, was a great guy and more than just an avid reader. He was a creature of habit and his number one habit was reading. His innate hesitancy toward change translated to an air of constancy about our house, and the shelves of books dominatin…
“I’ve written a book about cheer
“Time is on my side, yes it is … ”
What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Although most of us would not feel, thankfully one hopes, kindred in spirit to the tortured Macbeth about life, Shakespeare’s words may reflect the grim tone of far too many Americans at the mere mention of one word: Vietnam.
“Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them.”
Every picture tells a story, don’t it?
My son Josh and I were in the kitchen reflecting on the whole “New Year” thing the other day and soon after that I read this statement somewhere: “You can have your old new year, give me some new old years.”
“ ... and even though it all went wrong / I’ll stand right here before the Lord of Song / With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah … ”
Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest.
“I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
“It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame ... Let’s play two!”
“So it was that the war in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely the last fights of mankind were the best.”
“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety,…
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented… When human lives are endangered… national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. At that moment… (those places) become the center of the universe.”
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”
“Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives.
“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity.”
“I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books.
“Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
(Editor’s Note: Today we are introducing a new monthly column by a writer familiar to Finger Lakes Times readers, Dan Hennessy. His “Well-Rooted Perspective” columns ran on our Friday Religion pages for years. Now he is expanding beyond religion to touch on any number of subjects. His “Timel…
“Color doesn’t define character, culture doesn’t define character, creed doesn’t define character, only conduct does.”
“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.”
“The things I saw beggar description. … The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick.”
“‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business.’”
“The Winter Heart”
“For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning.”
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance — it is the illusion of knowledge.”
“And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.”
“Conservatism is too often a conservation of the wrong things… liberalism a relaxation of discipline, revolution a denial of the permanent things.”
(Editor’s note: Dan Hennessy’s “A Well-Rooted Perspective” normally runs on our Friday Religion page. For space reasons this week, we had to hold for the Weekend Edition.)
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.
“Do not urge me to leave you or to turn from following you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD punish me, and ever so severely, if …
Az Got zol voynen af der erd, voltn im di mentschen di fenster oysgeshlogn!
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd one.”
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
