List of Alistair Cooke Quotes

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.

[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.

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."

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."

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.

Authors Are Now Marketed Like Promising Movie Starlets And Must Rattle Around The Nation's Television Stations To Try To Assert A Salable Identity Different From That Of The Other Starlets.

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

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.

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.

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.

People In America, When Listening To Radio, Like To Lean Forward. People In Britain Like To Lean Back.

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.