Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will. Alistair Cooke More Quotes by Alistair Cooke More Quotes From Alistair Cooke [Golfers] are a special kind of moral realist who nips the normal romantic and idealistic yearnings in the bud by proving once or twice a week that life is unconquerable but endurable. Alistair Cooke bud special golf The Masters is more like a vast Edwardian garden party than a golf tournament. Alistair Cooke party garden golf It used to be said that you had to know what was happening in America because it gave us a glimpse of our future. Today, the rest of America, and after that Europe, had better heed what happens in California, for it already reveals the type of civilisation that is in store for all of us. Alistair Cooke california europe america The emblem on the necktie reserved for the members of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews - The Vatican of golf - is of St. Andrew himself bearing the slatier cross on which, once he was captured at Patras, he was to be stretched before he was crucified.Only the Scots would have thought of celebrating a national game with the figure of a tortured saint. Alistair Cooke saint games golf Golf is an open exhibition of overweening ambition, courage deflated by stupidity, skill soured by a whiff of arrogance. Alistair Cooke skills ambition golf [In 1889] the last big tract of Indian land was declared open for settlement, in Oklahoma. The claimants and the speculators mounted their horses and lined up like trotters waiting for a starting gun. The itchy ones jumped the gun and were ever after known as Sooners-and Oklahoma was thereafter called the Sooner State. Alistair Cooke horse gun land I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'. Alistair Cooke mind art thinking It rose slowly like a gull sensing a reckless blue fish to close to the surface, and then it dived relentlessly for the green, kicked and stopped three feet short of the flag. Alistair Cooke feet blue golf People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back. Alistair Cooke listening america people Sir Guy Campbell's classic account of the formation of the links, beginning with Genesis and moving step by step to the thrilling arrival of 'tilth' on the fingers of coastal land, suggests that such notable features of our planet as dinosaurs, the prairies, the Himalayas, the seagull, the female of the species herself, were accidental by-products of the Almighty's preoccupation with the creation of the Old Course at St. Andrews. Alistair Cooke land golf moving The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself. Alistair Cooke sea golf men I have an insane desire to shave a stroke or two off my handicap. Alistair Cooke insane golf two Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men. Alistair Cooke habit fellow-man men These doomsday warriors look no more like soldiers than the soldiers of the Second World War looked like conquistadors. The more expert they become the more they look like lab assistants in small colleges Alistair Cooke college soldier war There is even - as with no other game - a fascinating detective literature, a wry commentary on the human comedy, implicit in the book of rules. Alistair Cooke games golf book America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence. Alistair Cooke race country america So the British, of all ages, still walk the course. On trips to Florida or the American desert, they still marvel, or shudder, at the fleets of electric carts going off in the morning like the first assault wave at the Battle of El Alamein. It is unlikely, for some time, that a Briton will come across in his native land such a scorecard as Henry Longhurst rescued from a California club and cherished till the day he died. The last on its list of local rules printed the firm warning "A Player on Foot Has No Standing on the Course." Alistair Cooke player golf morning It has always been cited as an irrepressible symptom of America's vitality that her people, in fair times and foul, believe in themselves and their institutions. Alistair Cooke believe america people The South is one of those kingdoms of the mind, like India or Scotland, that are neat and understandable only to people who have never been there. Alistair Cooke scotland mind people No myth dies harder, and none is more regularly debunked by the facts, than the one about international sports contributing to international friendship. Alistair Cooke myth sports facts
