Pseudo-St. Teresa of Ávila

"Govern everything by your wisdom, O Lord, so that my soul may always be serving you in the way you will and not as I choose. Let me die to myself so that I may serve you; let me live to you who are life itself."

     Attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila but never, so far as I've been able to tell, with a proper citation.

     Also, having first tested these scans of the Complete works of Saint Teresa of Jesus, trans. E. Allison Peers, against the copy on my shelf, and found them to be functioning perfectly no matter what I pulled out of the three volumes of the latter at random, I searched for relevant occurrences of Govern, "your wisdom", "my soul" serving, "you will and not", "not as I choose", "die to myself", "live to you", and "life itself", but always came up empty.  Though this could have come from the hand of a translator other than Peers, it seems pretty unlikely that none of these short phrases would have been used by both.  For a searchable version of the critical edition of the Spanish, go here.

Fake newsies

"But let me ask you this.  A guy shoots 1 for 23 from the field."

"McDeere?"

"Yeah.  But he goes 8 for 8 from the foul line.  My question is, Why are you fouling this guy at all?  I’d just get out of the way and point him toward the basket."

     Toby Ziegler to Sam Seaborn, The West Wing, Season 3, Episode 11.

The Perishos and that untraceable 6:30-a.m. chirp

     "'Now there is the history of that burglar alarm—everything just as it happened; nothing extenuated, and naught set down in malice. Yes, sir; and when I had slept nine years with burglars, and maintained an expensive burglar alarm the whole time, for their protection, not mine, and at my sole cost—for not a d——d cent could I ever get them to contribute—I just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough of that kind of pie; so with her full consent I took the whole thing out and traded it off for a dog, and shot the dog.'"

     Mr. McWilliams in Mark Twain, "The McWilliamses and the burgler alarm" (December 1882), Mark Twain:  collected tales, sketches, speeches, & essays 1852-1890, Library of America 60 (New York, NY:  The Library of America, 1992), 843 (837-843).