Summer is a promissory note signed in June, its long days spent and gone before you know it, and due to be repaid next January. — Hal Borland
Author: gerryadmin
I must give this a try
“Always know exactly what you are going to say. Never know how you are going to say it.”
— Nigel Nicolson
How could we ever find out?
I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don’t know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy.
— Stephen Hawking
I believe the Epicureans said something similar
“One’s only ambition in life should be to be happy. Nothing else matters”
— Amanda Holden
Yet another
My mother taught me how to remain sane when faced with the implacable logic of small children: always give them choice, but controlled choice with inbuilt distraction. Not “would you like to eat your vegetables?” but “would you like to eat your vegetables from a green or a yellow plate?” Worked like a charm.
— Lisa Armstrong
Another piece
“The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and advise them to do it.”
— Harry S Truman
The first in a series of pieces of advice
An admonishment from Mr Hoyle, my English teacher: “Moore, there are two sorts of people in life, those that do and those that sit on the sidelines and snigger. Do I have to tell you which one is more worthy?”
— Brian Moore
That’s one way of looking at it
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
— G.K. Chesterton
On secrecy
“I never could see anything wrong in sensationalism; and I am sure our society is suffering more from secrecy than from flamboyant revelations.”
— G.K. Chesterton
January 2
The Feast of St Gregory Nazianzus
Gregory (329-390) was archbishop of Constantinople and one of the great theologians of his age. Along with Saints Basil and Gregory of Nyssa who were also born in central Asia Minor, he is known as one of the Cappadocian Fathers. Gregory defended Christianity against the revived paganism of the emperor Julian the Apostate and argued against the Arian form of Christianity which denied the divinity of Christ and which was supported by powerful politicians and churchmen in Constantinople. His brilliant oratory and writings in favour of the Trinitarian position helped that view of Christ to become orthodoxy.
533
Mercurius is elected pope and instead of using his own name becomes the first pontiff to choose a regnal name, styling himself John II. He felt it inappropriate that the Bishop of Rome should be named after the pagan god Mercury.
1492
The Christian reconquest of Spain ends with the fall of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian peninsula. In 711 an Arab and Berber army from North Africa had swept into Spain, conquering all but a corner of the northwest. From there Christian princes waged centuries of the Reconquista, gradually pushing the Muslim occupiers south until finally eradicating the Islamic presence in 1492.
