Well Said
--by Ben Henneke

Every now and again someone says a thing so well all you can do is wish you had said it.

Some unknown poet chose the collective noun describing more than one songbird, “An Exultation of Larks.”

I wish I had said that.

Edith Hamilton wrote “words are fossilized poetry.”

I wish I had said that.

The adapter of the Book of Common Prayer - was it Cranmer? - said,

“. . . we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts; we have offended against thy holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”

That's way beyond my abilities, but I can still admire.

Henry Clapp, when he was editor of the New York Press, said that Horace Greeley was a self-made man, who worshipped his creator.

Abe Martin - remember him? - sighed, -- I'm sure it was a sigh. “One of the finest accomplishment is to make a long story short.”

I have always wished I had said something memorable when I retired. My academic ideal is George Santayana who was concluding his remarks in his last lecture when he noticed a forsythia in bloom in a patch of muddy snow just outside the window, he picked up hat, gloves, and cane, “Gentlemen, I shall not be able to finish that sentence. I have just discovered that I have an appointment with April.”

When it came my time to deliver my last scheduled lecture, the best I could come up with was the first line of the Song of Simeon from the Book of Common Prayer,

“Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. . . “

I admire the man who wrote the epitaph for Charles Cyril Taylor buried in the antechamber of Canterbury Cathedral, -- as I admire the young man. “In him the rigid discipline of the officer was so tempered by the gentleness of his disposition as to make military obedience a service of affection.”

I temper that admiration with the cynicism of Mark Twain. “To do good is noble; to teach others to do good is nobler, and no trouble.”

Now, if you look for that quotation in Samuel Clemens' complete works you may not find it, because it was written on the flyleaf of a limited edition of Twain's works owned by Winston Churchill.

Of the miscellany of quotable quotes I've found, Ellen most likes the story of the biologist Lewis Thomas of the Sloan Kettering Institute. When he was asked what message we should send to other civilizations in space in the rocket, Voyager, he replied, “I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach,” then with second thought, “But that would be boasting.”

When I suffered with Cicero in third-year Latin, I never knew he could say wonderful things like, “A room without books is a body without soul.”

I suppose the terse, pithy sentence that I most wish I could have said, is also the thought I wish I could have been brilliant enough to conceive. It's Aristotle,

“The reward of philosophy is to do without being commanded what others do from fear of the laws.”

As I say, I wish I could have thought of them and then to have said any or all of them.