The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own. Alistair Cooke More Quotes by Alistair Cooke More Quotes From Alistair Cooke It is a wonderful tribute to the game or to the dottiness of the people who play it that for some people somewhere there is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle, an unplayable course, the wrong time of the day or year. Alistair Cooke games golf years New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world. Alistair Cooke cities-in-the-world village new-york Canned music is like audible wallpaper. Alistair Cooke music-is music Las Vegas is Everymans cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperors orgy is now a democratic institution. 'Topless Pizza Lunch'. Alistair Cooke lunch cutting food To get an elementary grasp of the game of golf, a human must learn, by endless practice, a continuous and subtle series of highly unnatural movements, involving about sixty-four muscles, that result in a seemingly natural swing, taking two seconds to begin and end. Alistair Cooke swings practice golf To the goggling unbeliever Texans say, as people always say about their mangier dishes, 'But it's just like chicken, only tenderer.' Rattlesnake is, in fact, just like chicken - only tougher. Alistair Cooke cowboy food people But afterall it's not the winning that matters, is it? Or is it? It'sto coinawordtheamenitiesthatcount: thesmell of the dandelions, the puff of the pipe, the click of the bat, the rain on the neck, the chill down the spine, the slow, exquisite coming on of sunset and dinner and rheumatism. Alistair Cooke sunset winning rain If computers take over, it will serve us right. Alistair Cooke over-it computer ifs Every sport pretends to a literature, but people don't believe it of any other sport but their own. Alistair Cooke sports believe people Like a christening, a wedding, a graduation ceremony, a holy war, a revolutioneven?a fireworksdisplay, agaudy promise of what life ought to be, not life itself. Alistair Cooke holy war promise Americans are less mystical about what produced their inland or meadow courses; they are the product of the bulldozerm rotary ploughs, mowers, sprinkler systems and alarmingly generous wads of folding money. Alistair Cooke meadows rotary golf For many years I had an impression of my golf swing, which was that I vividly resembled Tom Weiskopf in the takeaway and Dave Marr on the downswing. Unfortunately, there came a day when I was invited to have my golf swing filmed via a video camera. Something I will never do again. When it was played back, what I saw - what you would have seen - was not Weiskopf and Marr but a man simultaneously climbing into a sweater and falling out of a tree. Alistair Cooke golf men fall Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeless land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs-by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots. And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air. Alistair Cooke car land air When that happens [the demise of golf], old men will furtively beckon to their sons and, like fugitives from the guillotine recalling the elegant orgies at the court of Louis XV, will recite the glories of Portmarnock and Merion, of the Road Hole at St. Andrews, the sixth at Seminole, the eighteenth at Pebble Beach. They will take out this volume from its secret hiding place and they will say: "There is no question, son, that these were unholy places in an evil age. Unfortunately, I had a whale of a time." Alistair Cooke golf beach son Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper. Alistair Cooke cocktails accepted music-is I hasten to say to snobs from the Surrey pine-and-sand country that no invention since the corn plaster or the electric toothbrush has brought greater balm to the extremities of the senior golfer than the golfmobile, a word that will have to do for want of a better. Alistair Cooke senior golf country I talk to my typewriter and that is what I've been working on for 40 years-how to write for talking. Alistair Cooke writing talking years Washington's birthday is as close to a secular Christmas as any Christian country dare come this side of blasphemy. Alistair Cooke christmas christian country In golf, humiliations are the essence of the game. Alistair Cooke essence games golf More than anything else, though, to anyone who would write about it, golf offers a four-hour drama in two acts, which becomes memorable even in the tape-recorded reminiscenses of old champs, and which - in the hands of someone like Herb Wind - can become a piece of war correspondence as artfully controlled as Alan Morehead's account of Gallipoli. Alistair Cooke memorable drama war
