Quotes by James Keller

High up in the Rockies a small boy and his mother were visiting. One day, after he had been punished, the boy ran to the edge of the cliff and shouted at his mother, "I hate you! I hate you!" Across the ravine came the echo, "I hate you! I hate you!" Thoroughly frightened the boy ran to his mother and said . "Who is that bad man over there who said, 'I hate you'?" Taking the boy's hand, the mother led him back to the top of the cliff, "Now," she said, "call out 'I love you! I love you!'" Clearly and sweetly the echo came, repeating his words. "My boy," said the mother, taking him into her arms, "that is the law of life - what you give, you get in return."

Recently a large group of 'problem' children were given the assignment of writing essays on the difficulties they had with their parents. The papers they turned in were misspelled but lively, listing a number of rather predicable faults - gushing, nagging, refusing affection, and so on. But oddly enough the quality most children felt their parents lacked was truthfulness. None of us, of course, likes to think of himself as a liar. In important things we make it a point to be scrupulously honest. But if we examine our daily lives closely we may find dozens of examples of small compromises, trivial evasions. These seemingly unimportant deceits should be guarded against, since they can all too easily become a part of the fabric of our existence, influencing our relationships with others. An unflagging desire for truth in every aspect of our behavior does much to provide that sense of security for which all people yearn.

As she read the ten commandments for the first time, a Chinese woman said, "I don't see how anyone can very well get on without them."

Some time ago we heard a strange story. The pilot of a small plane said that he had been caught in a one hundred fifty mile gale, which held his plane perfectly still. The motor was roaring, he claimed, but the plane was not moving. "It was weird," he said , "to be going one hundred fifty miles an hour and yet not be going anywhere at all."

Sir William Blackstone, the great English jurist, writing in his Commentaries on the Laws of England in 1769, was most explicit in emphasizing the weakness of man's nature. As he observed: ". . . if our reason were always, as in our first ancestor before his transgression, clear and perfect,unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice, unimpaired by disease or intemperance, the task would be pleasant and easy; we should need no other guide but this. But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience; that his reason is corrupt, and his understanding full of ignorance and error. This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine Providence, which in compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased at sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law . . ."

A Seattle lawyer once interrupted his lengthy cross-examination of a witness and exclaimed, "Your Honor, one of the jurors is asleep." "You put him to sleep," replied the judge. "Suppose you wake him up."

The Metropolitan Museum of Art some time ago held a display of contemporary art at which $52,000 was awarded to American sculptors, painters, and artists in allied fields. The award for the best painting went to the canvas of an Illinois artist. It was described as "a macabre, detailed work showing a closed door bearing a funeral wreath." Equally striking was the work's title: "That which I should have done, I did not do."

During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please . . . please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!"

We heard recently the touching story of a young flier who was killed in action. Before he died, he had time to scrawl only a few words as a brief final message to his parents back home. The note read: "Dear Mom and Pop; I had time to say my prayers. Jack."

"I think we'll have a good potato crop this year," a newspaper editor told his housekeeper one morning. "No such thing," asserted the housekeeper. "I think the crop will be poor." Ignoring her remark, the editor caused to be inserted in the evening paper his estimate of the crop situation. That night when he returned home he found the housekeeper waiting for him with a sheepish grin on her face and a copy of the paper in her hand. "I was wrong," she said apologetically. "It says right here in the paper that the crop will be excellent this fall."