James Keller Quotes

A high-school girl, seated next to a famous astronomer at a dinner party, struck up a conversation with him by asking: "What do you do for a living?" "I study astronomy," he replied. "Really? said the teenager, wide-eyed. "I finished astronomy last year."

"I think we'll have a good potato crop this year," a newspaper editor told his housekeeper one morning. "No such thing," asserted the housekeeper. "I think the crop will be poor." Ignoring her remark, the editor caused to be inserted in the evening paper his estimate of the crop situation. That night when he returned home he found the housekeeper waiting for him with a sheepish grin on her face and a copy of the paper in her hand. "I was wrong," she said apologetically. "It says right here in the paper that the crop will be excellent this fall."

It is so often true that whether a person carries with him an atmosphere of gloom and depression or one of confidence and courage depends on his individual outlook.

Some time ago we heard a strange story. The pilot of a small plane said that he had been caught in a one hundred fifty mile gale, which held his plane perfectly still. The motor was roaring, he claimed, but the plane was not moving. "It was weird," he said , "to be going one hundred fifty miles an hour and yet not be going anywhere at all."

We heard recently the touching story of a young flier who was killed in action. Before he died, he had time to scrawl only a few words as a brief final message to his parents back home. The note read: "Dear Mom and Pop; I had time to say my prayers. Jack."

A young lady had only one complaint about her good husband: "My husband always praises me to other people," she said, "Often I hear from friends the wonderful things he has said about me. But I miss something, because he never gets around to saying these some things to me, to my face."

A candle loses nothing of its light by lighting another candle.

A young man, just beginning the study of musical composition, once went to Mozart and asked him the formula for developing the theme of a symphony. Mozart suggested that a symphony was rather an ambitious project for a beginner: perhaps the young man might better try his hand at something simpler first. "But you were writing symphonies when you were my age." the student protested. "Yes, but I didn't have to ask how."

During a heavy storm at sea a nervous woman passenger on a large liner went to the captain, seeking reassurance. "Captain," she asked tremulously, "are we in great danger?" "Don't worry, madam," he answered, "after all, we in the hands of God." "Oh," she gasped, terror written on her face, "is it as bad as that?"

A young lady went into a bookstore and asked the clerk for Irving Stone's book, "Immoral Wife." The title is "Immortal Wife," the clerk replied. "I'll get it for you." Oh, please don't bother, If that's the correct name of the book, I don't think I'd care for it. I had something else in mind.

In Holman Hunt's painting, "The Light of the World, "Christ is shown in a garden at midnight, holding a lantern in His left hand. With His right hand He is knocking on a heavily paneled door. When the painting was unveiled, a critic remarked to the painter, "Mr. Hunt, the work is unfinished. There is no handle on the door." "That," Hunt answered, "is the door to the human heart. It can be opened only from the inside."

A Seattle lawyer once interrupted his lengthy cross-examination of a witness and exclaimed, "Your Honor, one of the jurors is asleep." "You put him to sleep," replied the judge. "Suppose you wake him up."

When Babe Didrickson Zaharias, often called the 'athletic phenomenon of all time,' won the British woman's gold tournament, people said of her what they had said many times before: "Oh, she's an automatic champion, a natural athlete." When Babe started golfing in earnest thirteen years ago she hit as many as 1,000 balls in one afternoon, playing until her hands were so sore they had to be taped.

What this country needs is more people to inspire others with confidence, and fewer people to discourage any initiative in the right direction more to get into the thick of things, fewer to sit on the sidelines, merely finding fault more to point out what's right with the world, and fewer to keep harping on what's wrong with it and more who are interested in lighting candles, and fewer who blow them out.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art some time ago held a display of contemporary art at which $52,000 was awarded to American sculptors, painters, and artists in allied fields. The award for the best painting went to the canvas of an Illinois artist. It was described as "a macabre, detailed work showing a closed door bearing a funeral wreath." Equally striking was the work's title: "That which I should have done, I did not do."

During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please ... please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!"

The will of a wealthy New York woman, in addition to distributing her worldly goods to her children, left them the following advice: Love one another. Hold fast to that whether you understand one another or not, and remember nothing really matters except being kind to one another in the name of Christ and to all the world as far as you can reach.