Utterly Delightful
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A compact book with more than 1,000 quotations and anecdotes you can enjoy at any time.
Here are just a few:
Violet Asquith, the irrepressible daughter of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, found a kindred spirit in Churchill, who served in her father's Cabinet.
Once, in a flight of philosophical gloom, she turned to her dinner partner and said, "Winston, in terms of infinity, we are cosmic dust - we are just worms."
"Perhaps, Violet", Churchill replied, "but I am a glowworm."
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If "Franglais" has been only recently coined to describe the bastardizing of the French language by English words, Churchill may have been the sire of this hybrid argot. Sometimes his additions to the noble Gallic tongue were even more attrocious than his accent.
During some delicate negotions at Casablanca, the stubborn Charles de Gaulle denounced an Allied plan to fuse him and his rival, French general Henri Giraud. Churchill, glaring at the Gaulle, delivered this concoction: "Si vous m'obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai!" (If you obstacle me, I will liquidate you!) A bewildered de Gaulle backed off.
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In 1900, the twenty-six-year-old Churchill, after just being elected to Parliament, made a speaking tour of America. In Washington, he was introduced to a majestically endowed woman from Richmond, Virginia, who prided herself upon her devotion to the "lost cause of the Confederacy." Her family were Democrats who had opposed the Repubican policy of Reconstruction.
Anxious that Churchill should know her sentiments, she remarked as she gave him her hand, "Mr. Churchill, you see before you a rebel who has not been Reconstructed."
"Madam," he replied with a deep bow that surveyed her decolletage, "reconstruction in your case would be blasphemous."
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