George Eliot was born on this date in 1819. She is the author of one of my favorite books, “Silas Marner.” She also had quite a bit to say about hope, including the following quotes taken from her writing:
“What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
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“For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.”
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“. . . you know nothing about Hope, that immortal, delicious maiden forever courted forever propitious, whom fools have called deceitful, as if it were Hope that carried the cup of disappointment, whereas it is her deadly enemy, Certainty, whom she only escapes by transformation.”
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Terry Gilliam was born today in Minneapolis in 1940. Gilliam went on to fame as a comedy writer and animator on the British TV show “Monty Python.” He has also directed several interesting and provocative movies, including:
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Twelve Monkeys (1995)
The Fisher King (1991)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Brazil (1985)
Time Bandits (1981)
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On this day in 1963, the scholar, novelist and Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, died at the age of 65. He wrote, among many other things: “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “The Screwtape Letters,” and “The Great Divorce.” Lewis was also a very quotable person, as evidenced by what follows.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
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“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
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“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
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“Human strengths have a dark side. Our strengths under duress become our weaknesses. Our strengths contain seeds of our destruction.”
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“Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.”
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On this day in 1983, the actor Michael Conrad, who starred in one of my favorite TV series Hill Street Blues), died of cancer at 58. Below is a brief tribute to him from some of his fellow cast members (sorry about the commercial at the beginning of the video).
Well, that’s all for today, and as Conrad used to say on “Hill Street Blues” at the end of every roll call, “You be careful out there.”
