Thursday, April 09, 2009

Goodbye Edison

It’s been a long time coming. When we first published the Turner-Riggs website, we gave Thomas Edison’s quote, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it” a place of honour on our homepage since we thought it complemented our main text. Shortly after, Craig’s uncle and business colleague Wayne MacPhail let us in on Edison’s yen for electrocuting animals, and we knew the quote had to go.

That was over a year ago.

Since then, we’ve been a little busy with business and baby. But we’re pleased to announce that we’ve replaced Edison’s quote with one from Balzac: “As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move ... coffee is your ally.” We find it both true and funny, but we don’t know much about Balzac except that he’s credited with several other pithy remarks that make us slightly nervous. Among them:

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
A husband who submits to his wife’s yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman’s influence ought to be entirely concealed.
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.

Hmmm. But these can possibly be explained by the times he wrote in. If anyone knows of any compelling reason why Balzac should be banned from the Turner-Riggs homepage, speak now or forever hold your peace. Wayne?

Update: Farewell, Balzac. Your quote took up too much space on our page, and it sorta diffused our main message about what it is we do. But we do agree that life with coffee is infinitely better than life without.