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Quotations of the Day: May 2003
May 31, 2003
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. —Walt Whitman
May 30, 2003
You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril. —Joan of Arc
May 29, 2003
I don’t generally feel anything until noon, then it’s time for my nap. —Bob Hope
May 28, 2003
I cannot give them my confidence; pardon me, gentlemen, confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom: youth is the season of credulity. —William Pitt, the Elder
Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920’s and 1930’s when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother’s keeper. —Hubert H. Humphrey
May 25, 2003
If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 24, 2003
Conscience was the barmaid of the Victorian soul. Recognizing that human beings were fallible and that their failings, though regrettable, must be humoured, conscience would permit, rather ungraciously perhaps, the indulgence of a number of carefully selected desires. —C.E.M. Joad
May 23, 2003
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. —Anonymous
May 22, 2003
The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass. —Laurence Olivier
May 21, 2003
The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
May 20, 2003
Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent. —James Connolly
May 19, 2003
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. —Lorraine Hansberry
May 18, 2003
Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: / Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where. —Omar Khayyám
May 17, 2003
To separate [children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. —Earl Warren
May 16, 2003
There was a time we was on the land. There was a boundary to us then. Old folks died off and little fellers come. We was always one thing. We was the family, kinda whole and clear. But now we ain’t clear no more.... They ain’t no family now. —Nunnally Johnson
May 15, 2003
Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes. —Clemens Metternich
May 14, 2003
Men and nations do behave wisely, once all other alternatives have been exhausted. —Abba Eban
May 13, 2003
Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas. —Georges Braque
May 12, 2003
Genius domus of the New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors. —J.D. Salinger
May 11, 2003
Won’t you play a simple melody / Like my mother sang to me— / One with good old fashioned harmony. / Play a simple melody. —Irving Berlin
May 10, 2003
A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you. —Ramsey Clark
Not hate, but glory, made these chiefs contend; / And each brave foe was in his soul a friend. —Alexander Pope
May 7, 2003
The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. —Archibald MacLeish
May 6, 2003
The United Nations will not abolish sin, but it can make it more difficult for the sinners. —Ivor Richard
May 5, 2003
When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life. —Christopher Morley
May 4, 2003
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies / and to end as superstitions. —Thomas Henry Huxley
May 3, 2003
The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the “creative” is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death. —May Sarton
May 2, 2003
Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly. —Georg Büchner
May 1, 2003
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
