Tuesday, 30 August 2011

Thing To Do Today: hope.

'Hope springs eternal in the human breast,' said Alexander Pope.

Well, that's good, then.

Another Hope quote:

'I thought Deep Throat was a movie about a giraffe.'

Yes, that was Bob Hope, bless him. Full of gags, was Bob, and he appeared in the film Road To Morocco which had the best ever dictionary pun in it : Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Morocco bound.*

Oh, Bob was never short of a one-liner:

People who throw kisses are mighty, hopelessly lazy.

And there's a great truth for you.

On the subject of courtship, in America there are hope chests, I understand, to hold a woman's new clothes until she finally finds someone worth marrying. (Here in England the same thing is called a bottom drawer.)

And on the subject of marriage, Samuel Johnson called second marriages the triumph of hope over experience.
But he had a very happy marriage, so that was just a gag, too.

I'll sign off with Bob again:

My father told me all about the birds and the bees, the liar. I went steady with a woodpecker until I was twenty one.

Thing To Do Today:  hope. This word, being eternal, has hardly changed in a thousand years. The Old English was hopa, the Dutch was hoop, and the Middle High German hoffe.

*This pun was actually made up by his pal Bing Crosby.

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