My Small Boat

On Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

Crispin — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:47:11 +0000

A bishop interviewing Justin Welby when he first put himself forward for ordination:

I have interviewed a thousand candidates for ordination and you don’t come in the top thousand.

Graffito

Crispin — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:58:33 +0000

Things I hate
1) Vandalism
2) Irony
3) Lists

Margaret Thatcher

Crispin — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 21:17:20 +0000

I had applied for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries in 1948 and was called for a personal interview. However I failed to get selected. Many years later, I succeeded in finding out why I had been rejected. The remarks written by the selectors on my application were: “This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated!”

Michael Symmons Roberts

Crispin — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 07:53:08 +0000

Jairus

So, God takes your child by the hand
and pulls her from her deathbed.
He says: ‘Feed her, she is ravenous.’

You give her fruits with thick hides
– pomegranate, cantaloupe –
food with weight, to keep her here.

You hope that if she eats enough
the light and dust and love
which weave the matrix of her body

will not fray, nor wear so thin
that morning sun breaks through her,
shadowless, complete.

Somehow this reanimation
has cut sharp the fear of death,
the shock of presence. Feed her

roast lamb, egg, unleavened bread:
forget the herbs, she has an aching
fast to break. Sit by her side,

split skins for her so she can gorge,
and notice how the dawn
draws colour to her just-kissed face.

Albert Bartlett

Crispin — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:57:42 +0000

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

Winston Churchill

Crispin — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 09:01:47 +0000

On September 28 the fleet came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local “fyrd” had been called out this year four times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet arrived had gone back to their homes.

Tom Stoppard

Crispin — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:01:34 +0000

Milne: No matter how imperfect things are, if you’ve got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable.
Ruth: I’m with you on the free press. It’s the newspapers I can’t stand.

Lord Tennyson

Crispin — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 16:03:42 +0000

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

George Macdonald

Crispin — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 23:42:41 +0000

That is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Crispin — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:33:42 +0000

It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so odds with prayer as vanity