Some people can talk all day and not say much, can’t they? A verbose speaker employing overblown rhetoric reportedly once inspired a humorous observation from President Abraham Lincoln. Henry Clay Whitney was a close friend of Lincoln’s. In 1892 Whitney published “Life On the Circuit With Lincoln.” In that book Whitney related the following. “There […]

Robert Epstein is editor in chief of Psychology Today. In the June issue, he wrote an editorial that was essentially an ad for a woman who would agree to date him exclusively, go to couples’ counseling to get to know each other, and then “fall deeply in love” by the end of an agreed-upon time-perhaps […]

A prayer by a Scottish preacher applies to Americans, too – “O Lord, may we always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds.” That prayer reminds us there can be a Grand- Canyon-sized difference between what people believe is right and what really is right. As late U. S. Senator Daniel […]

Cecil Beaton was an English costume designer for films and the theater. He said this about the “miniskirt” – “Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.” Beaton’s comment reminds us that the Bible has some things to […]

Humphrey Bogart was an American film and stage actor. His performances in American films made him a cultural icon during his career. The story is that he was once taken to watch a young comedian who had a reputation for doing a very good Bogart imitation. Bogart sat in the audience and was asked afterwards […]

An emcee at a large fancy gala dinner introduced the guest speaker as follows: “Rumor has it our speaker maintained a 4.0 grade point average and stayed on the dean’s list throughout his college career. Rumor has it that he was captain of the football, baseball, and track teams three years in a row. Rumor […]

Years ago, in a devotional book called “Our Daily Bread,” F.B. Meyer wrote about two Germans who wanted to climb the Matterhorn. The Matterhorn is a world famous mountain, at least to mountain climbers, and it attracts many of them like a magnet attracts metal. The mountain is part of the Alps. It straddles the main watershed […]

I read a story about a 4-year-old boy who was waiting with his mother in the doctor’s office. They were discussing the kinds of earth-shaking issues that concern a four-year old in a doctor’s office. Issues like, “What am I doing here?” and “Where’s the doctor?” and “Why isn’t God married?” and “Does the doctor […]

The Talmud is the comprehensive written version of vast Jewish oral laws and the subsequent commentaries. It is a challenging religious text, but contains some very practical advice. I ran across one example years ago that has remained in my memory banks. It says, “Examine the contents, not the bottle.” We hear the same difficult […]

A lady named Jacqueline Power said, “A sign on the elevator door in the building where I worked said, ‘This elevator is out of whack.’ Later someone had penciled in, ‘More whack is on order.’ ” Do you ever feel like you’ve “out of whack?” The phrase just means something is not working properly or, […]