Weekend Words: Fence
On Wednesday, Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, resigned.
On Wednesday, Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service, resigned.
From a letter to the editor in response to the article “Armed Intruder at White House Got to East Room” (front page, Sept. 30) in The New York Times:
This episode demonstrates complete incompetence by the Secret Service. Its agents are extremely vigilant, and even annoying, in dealing with ordinary citizens who want only to stand at the fence and look across the South Lawn at the White House (that happened to me). But obviously they are incompetent in dealing with an attack on the White House, even by a single man.
“Poor Henry James, he’s spending eternity wandering round and round a stately park and the fence is just too high for him to peep over and they’re having tea just too far away for him to hear what the countess is saying.”
—W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
“It’s high time something was done for the pitchers. They put up the stands and take down fences to make more home runs and plague the pitchers. Let them revive the spitter and help the pitchers make a living.”
—Casey Stengel
“A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.”
—H. L. Mencken
“Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow-dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears,
Without, our shame, within, our consciences,
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.”
—George Herbert, “Sin, Lord, with what care Thou hast begirt us round”
“What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down”
—Jim Morrison, “When the Music’s Over”
“How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man.”
—Johnny Cash
“High o’er the fence leaps Sunny Jim
‘Force’ is the food that raiseshim.”
—Minnie Hanff, advertising slogan for breakfast cereal (1903)
“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”
—John Locke
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence to see for themselves.”
—Will Rogers
