People say the darnest things. Throughout history, men and women from all walks of life have opened their mouths and made us applaud, weep or gasp in wonder and disbelief. But only the last category interests us here.
Oliver Cromwell often said this grace before dinner: “Some people have food but no appetite. Some people have an appetite but no food. I have both. The Lord be praised!”
Stanley P. Lovell, in his book Of Spies And Statagems, has this to say about Adolf Hitler: “He was close to the male-female line. A push to the female side might make his mustache fall out and his voice become soprano”
The Stillman Diet, also known as The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet, strictly forbids eating anything other than cottage cheese and tap water. A revolutionary brainchild of Dr. Erwin Stillman, it’s other variations include The Baked Potato and Buttermilk Diet, The Yogurt Only Diet and The Bananas and Milk Diet: “By considering a banana as one meal, and a glass of skim milk as another meal…you can eat nine…meals a day and still weigh only 900 calories.”
Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was once asked about his opinions on hippies. With a grandfatherly benevolence, he smiled and said: “They eats chicken don’t they?”
Incidentally, after selling his recipe to a multinational fastfood company, the substituted gravy raised his hackles, and tasting it for the first time, he crowed: “How do you serve this goddamn slop? With a straw?”
Still on the subject of food, a gourmet cannibal chief from Tahiti gave this kitchen tip: “The white man, when well roasted, tastes like a ripe banana.”
United States Senator Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota) once declared: “My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, bologna, cheddar cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise on toasted bread with lots of catsup on the side. Another favorite is toasted peanut butter, cheese and bacon, or, if I’m in a hurry, just peanut butter and jelly.”
Speaking of U.S. senators, Barry Goldwater (Arizona) imparted this nugget: “If you don’t mind smelling like a peanut for two or three days, peanut butter is a darn good shaving cream.”
Dr. James Graham erected the Temple of Hymen in 1776, filled with tasteful erotic art. He, together, with beautiful, prominent women appearing naked in the interest of science, gave chaste lessons of sexually related subjects. His Lecture On Generation taught “The art of preventing barrenness, and propagating a much more strong, beautiful, active, healthy, wise and virtuous race of human beings than the present puny, insignificant, foolish, peevish and nonsensical race of Christians, who quarrel, fight, bite, devour and cut each other’s throats about they know not what.”
The bastard Leonardo da Vinci is the most brilliant illegitimate of all time. Being the ultimate Renaissance man assured him a steady flow of intrigues. Nonchalantly he replied: “I take no more notice of the wind coming out of the mouth of critics than the wind expelled from their backsides.”
Speaking of intrigues, Babe Ruth was asked during the Depression if it was fair he was earning more than (US) President Hoover, and without batting an eyelash, said: “Well, I had a better year.”
Rev. Ronald Stephens, a Protestant clergyman, endorsed Blue Brand Margarine in a London TV ad in 1971: “Margarine has goodness in it and the body needs the fats in margarine as the soul needs God.”
The popular hostess Isadora Duncan once read a book on eugenics, and interpreting it as a clarion call for witty and talented people to produce a league of extraordinary babies, broached the idea to George Bernard Shaw during a London dinner party. The Pygmalion playwright said politely: “Yes Miss Duncan. But what if the child should have my body and your brains?”
Fundamentalist, millionaire, geographer and multi-tasker Wilbur Glenn Voliva of Zion City Illinois, preached that, according to the Bible, the earth is as flat as a pancake. Newspapers in Milwaukee and Chicago would publish every year his $5,000 challenge to anyone who would debate with him. He warned: “I can whip into smithereens any man in the world in a mental battle. I have never met any professor or student who knew about the subject as I do.”
Captain John Cleves Symmes was a hero from the War of 1812. Bringing his brave vision to the US Congress in 1823, he said: “I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within, containing a number of concentric spheres and that it is open to the poles 12 or 16 degrees.”
To reach the Symmes Hole in the North Pole, they must circumnavigate unimaginative politicians to arrive at the “warm, rich land, stocked with thrifty vegestables and animals, if not men.”
The epic novel Les Miserables contains one of the longest sentences in literature, 823 words without a period to be exact. Victor Hugo wrote to his publishers inquiring about the manuscript: “?”
His publishers replied: “!”
Oliver Cromwell photo courtesy of Harpers.org. This story originally appeared in Philippine Panorama, January 23, 1995.
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