Some Anecdotes

Anecdotes

Anecdotes are sometimes the best vehicles of truth, and if striking and appropriate, are often more impressive and powerful than argument. - Tryon Edwards (1809-1894)

A collection of anecdotes and maxims is the greatest of treasures for the man of the world, for he knows how to intersperse conversation with the former in fit places, and to recollect the latter on proper occasions. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tips

You may find stories, anecdotes and quotes all around you. Do what suits you.

Your own life - find amusing anecdotes and life-defining moments. No one can tell these stories like you can, and in the first person. If your audience is not listening to judge you, things may go well. They too have their stories.

Become an Observer of Life - by observing nature and inanimate objects such as buildings, watching people. A conversation may provide inspiration for a story or vignette that can form material for your speech.

An avid reader - as you read, certain combinations of words will leap off the page or screen and will resonate with you, to generate stories.

Gain relevant outlooks of life. There is no need to get obsessed with learning and telling stories - that would be a mistake.

The stagecoach library

THE BRITISH classical scholar Richard Porson (1759-1808) was once travelling in a stagecoach with a young Oxford student who let slip a Greek quotation that he said was from Sophocles - merely an attempt to impress the young and lovely ladies sitting there. The professor was not taken in by the young man's bluff; he pulled a pocket edition of Sophocles from the folds of his coat and challenged him to find the passage in it.

The student said that he had made a mistake and that the quotation was from Euripides. It amused the young ladies when Porson at once took out a copy of Euripides from his pocket and challenged him again to find it.

In a last desperate attempt the young man announced with conviction that the passage was from Aeschylus. But on seeing a copy of Aeschylus emerge from Porson's pocket, he admitted defeat at last.

"Coachman!" he cried. "Let me out! There's a fellow here has a whole library in his pocket."

No fussy old maid

It was the maid's day off and the lady of the house was doing her own marketing. On her way home she happened to meet the girl wheeling a baby carriage. It contained a smiling set of twins. The lady stopped to pet the children and casually asked the maid, "Whose children are these?"

"Mine, ma'am," said Sally.

"Yours, Sally? Why, I always thought you were an old maid."

"Well, not a fussy old maid."

He was eventually found and had a smoke

From a self-portrait by Rubens

"The electrical wizard" Charles Steinmetz was an inveterate smoker. Once a notice that forbade smoking was posted in the General Electric plant where he worked. Steinmetz ignored it till an executive asked if he wasn't aware of the rule. The answer was a cold indifferent stare.

Next day Steinmetz didn't show up, and for two days none heard from him. Important work remained untouched. The company began a serious search. It ended in the lobby of a Buffalo hotel. There he was found sitting at ease in a huge chair, puffing a cigar.

When told that the whole company was looking for him, and asked why he had left like that, he calmly said,

"I came up here to have a smoke."

After that the smoking rule was never applied to him.

A voice came

Plato tells a fable of how spirits of the other world came back to find bodies and places to work. One took the body of a poet and did his work. Finally, Ulysses came and said,

"All the fine bodies have been taken and all the grand work done. There's nothing for me."

"Yes," said a voice, "the best has been left for you - the body of a common man, doing a common work for a common reward."

Something done

The famous painter Degas gave a little exclamation of disgust.

"Not one of these fellows has ever gone so far as to ask himself what art is all about!"

"Well, what's it all about?" countered one critic.

"I've spent my whole life trying to find out. If I knew I should have done something about it."

The royal hate

It's often fair to keep a dress; it may come back into style.

MUCH AS he hated to give long-winded speeches, King Frederick William 4 hated even more to have to listen to them.

Once after a long and tiresome trip he arrived at a small town in Prussia. Natives there had thronged the streets since daybreak waiting for his arrival. As the royal carriage pulled into town the bands began to play, the people shouted and the fat burgomaster, perspiring in a new red coat, came forward. With a dramatic gesture he opened his welcoming speech in this way:

"Most high and powerful lord! When Hannibal stood before the gates of Carthage -"

"He was probably just as hungry as I am," Frederick broke in, putting his hand on the speaker's shoulder, "Come, my friend, let's go and have dinner together."

The yell to pass along to your children?

Marshal Foch visited the Grand Canyon, and the American Colonel John White hung breathlessly on the Marshal's words as he turned to him after a long scrutiny of the depths below.

"Now," thought the Colonel, "I'll hear something worthy of passing along to my children and grandchildren."

The Marshal, "What a beautiful place to drop one's mother-in-law!"

Very famous astrologer bending

A WOMAN heard that the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a famous astrologer, visited him to ask him to find out where she had lost her purse - somewhere between London Bridge and Shooters' Hill, she thought. Newton merely shook his head.

But the woman persisted, she made as many as fourteen visits. To get rid of her, Newton at last donned an eccentric costume, chalked a circle around himself, and intoned,

"Abracadabra! Go to the facade of Greenwich Hospital, third window on the south side. On the lawn in front of it I see a dwarfish devil bending over your purse."
      Away went the woman, and that is where she found it, according to the story.

Terribly annoyed by gout in progress

WHILE IN the United States the British eccentric and naturalist Charles Waterton (1782-1865) was terribly annoyed by inquiries of other less-adventurous gentlemen who were staying in the same hotel as he, as to the progress of his "gout."

Then he remembered that in the past, when his ankle had been badly sprained, a doctor had ordered him to hold it under the pump two or three times a day. It struck him therefore that it might be a kind of super-cure if he held his ankle under the Niagara Falls. He did it too.

We accept God as the universe

The proof of the home is the nursery. (American proverb)

THE US writer Margaret Fuller (1810-50) played a leading role in the New England transcendentalist movement as a philosopher, and was an early advocate of women's rights. At one time she cried out enthusiastically,

"I accept the universe."

Hearing of this, Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish historian, snarled,

"By God, she'd better!"

Viewing a lot on the most beautiful spot

THE BRITISH scholar William Paton Ker was a brisk walker and lover of mountain scenery. He revisited the Italian Alps in 1923. While he was walking up the slopes of the Pizzo Bianco at Macugnaga, he paused, and next remarked to his companions,

"I thought this was the most beautiful spot in the world, and now I know it."

So saying, he dropped dead of a heart attack.

Oil and water don't mix (Proverb)

AT A STUFFY English garden party, Beatrice Lillie (Lady Peel), wearing the Peel pearls, was approached by a lady who said maliciously,

"What lovely pearls, Beatrice. Are they genuine?"

Miss Lillie nodded.

"Of course, you can always tell by biting them," said the other. "Here, let me see."

"Gladly, Duchess," said Lady Peel, bringing forward her jewels, "but remember you can't tell real pearls with false teeth."

How to do it - alternative ways and outlooks

In beautiful bathing trunks on the truly great beach

AN AMERICAN soldier that was attached to one of the American Tank Units in a long gone Libyan campaign, had been carried many miles deep into the heart of the desert to an outpost of the Front. It had been quiet for days when the soldier one afternoon got a few hours' leave. With some surprise his commanding officer spotted him striding across the sands, clad in bathing trunks.

"Murphy!" shouted the officer, "where do you think you're going?"

Said the soldier, "I just thought I'd take a dip in the surf while I had a couple of hours off."

"Are you crazy?" demanded the officer. "The ocean is 500 miles from here!"

"Beautiful big beach, isn't it?" said the soldier.

How to do it as seen through the eyes of Spencer Tracy

US FILM ACTOR Spencer Tracy (1900-67) was asked by director Garson Kanin why he insisted on first billing when he co-starred in films with Katharine Hepburn.

"Why not?" asked Tracy.

"Well, after all," reasoned Kanin, "she's the lady and you're the man. Ladies first?"

Retorted Tracy: "This is a movie, not a lifeboat."

Another time, when asked what he looked for in a script, Tracy's immediate reply was, "Days off."

But the most valuable advice Tracy gave was: "Just learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture."

Disraeli's dismay - maybe not so bad after all?

ON THE FIRST morning of a house party the wife of the British Conservative statesman Benjamin Disraeli said to her hostess at breakfast,

"I find that your house is full of indecent pictures."

Alarm and dismay spread across the faces of the assembled guests. Mrs. Disraeli went on,

"There is a most horrible picture in our bedroom. Disraeli says it is Venus and Adonis. I have been awake half the night trying to prevent his looking at it."

[Frank Muir's comments, "The account does not specify the method Mrs. Disraeli adopted".]

Handy jokes solve interpersonal problems, maths also

Very quick and smart progress
is often aided by maths!

Although he had never been taught the simple formula for solving such problems, Gauss handed in his slate within seconds. For the next hour the boy sat idly while his classmates laboured.

At the end of the lesson there was a pile of slates on top of Gauss's, all with incorrect answers. The master was stunned to find the single correct number came from the youngest in class. He bought the best available arithmetic textbook for Gauss and advanced his progress from then on. Gauss became a significant mathematician.

To appear strangely undefined or mysterious - a sign of combat strength at times of unrest

THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS of the Earl of Shaftesbury remained a mystery. He once remarked that all wise men are of but one religion.

"Which is that?" he was promptly asked.

"Wise men never tell," he replied.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-83), British statesman and lord chancellor at one time, also survived a charge of high treason.

There is no trust where there are lots of old men gathered

SOME YEARS AGO a theological tempest in a teapot raged over the issue of Fundamentalism versus Modernism. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick in New York was in the forefront of it. They say that once he was awakened in the small hours of the morning by persistent telephone ringing. He hastened to answer it,

"Hello."

A voice: "Ish thish Mr. Foshdick?"

"Yes, this is Dr. Fosdick speaking."

"Dr. Harry Emerson Foshdick?"

"Yes, yes, what is it that you want?"

"Dr. Foshdick, I want to know the difference between Fundamentalism and Modernism."

"Good Heavens!" said Fosdick, "That's not something I can explain to you over the telephone and obviously you're in no condition to hear."

"But I can't wait till tomorrow. I must know now," insisted the other.

"Why can't you wait until tomorrow?," said Fosdick angrily, "Why do you have to know now?"

"Becaush tomorrow I won't give a damn," said the voice patiently.

Offhand approval

He who is bold doesn't always stumble and fall.

"Have you anybody here who can vouch for your character?" said the judge.

"Yes, the sheriff there can."

"I don't even know this man," exclaimed the sheriff.

"Observe," said the Irishman triumphantly, "that I've lived twelve years in this county and the sheriff doesn't even know me."

Follower mail

THE BRITISH comic actor Peter Sellers (192S-80) once received this letter from a fan:

"Dear Mr. Sellers, I have been a keen follower of yours for many years now, and should be most grateful if you would kindly send me a singed photograph of yourself."

Encouraged by Harry Secombe, Sellers took the writer at his word. With the flame of his cigarette lighter, he carefully burned the edges of one of his publicity photographs and sent it off by mail.

A couple of weeks later another letter arrived from the fan.

"Dear Mr. Sellers," it read, "Thank you very much for the photograph, but I wonder if I could trouble you for another as this one is signed all round the edge."

Alarming problem solved

Insurance companies, like banks, are at times heartless. (In part an American proverb)

In one such instance a deal was held up for a long time because a US client refused to tell the cause of his father's death. After much wheedling the agent extracted that the client's father had been hanged, but could not induce his client to state this on the insurance blank.

"All right, we'll put it this way," said the agent. In the troublesome blank he wrote: "Fell from scaffold; death at once."

The problem was solved, or so it seems.

The famous thing

A FRIEND once remarked to the famous cartoonist, (J. J. Darling) Ding,

"You must get a great deal of praise from all sides."

"No more than I need," he replied.

Some Further Points

The artist never dies. [Ap 28]

Every artist was first an amateur. [Ap 28]

Advancing on and on horisontally only, may not be as good as it looks like.

Without good pleasures, life gets tarnished and society deteriorates.

What is good art? Living

Getting accepted, getting frivolous

Rigorous: Getting professional as brought into system

over and over again.

And not too airily.

Literature  

• Rubens Paintings (some are nudes)