"There are two times I feel stress--day and night."
-Anon.

"A fool and his money are some party!"
-Anon.

"Avoid reality at all costs."
-Anon.

"A penny saved is ridiculous!"
-Anon.

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." Oscar Wilde

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." Helen Keller

"...happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it..." Aristotle

"Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life." Burton Hills

"Heck was created for those who refuse to believe in Gosh."
-Anon.

"Keep things the way they are...vote for the sado-masochist party!"
-Anon.

"Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity."
-Anon.

"Death and taxes are both certain...but death isn't annual."

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
-Mark Twain

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
-Mark Twain

"Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune time."
-Anon.

"Friends come and go but enemies accumulate."
-Anon.

"For every problem there is a simple solution, and it's always wrong."
-Anon.

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
-Mark Twain

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read."
-Mark Twain

"Most people deserve each other."
-Anon.

"The trouble with getting a life is making the payments."
-Anon.

"Never tell them what you wouldn't want to do."
-Anon.

"Nostalgia is okay but not what it used to be."
-Anon.

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."
-Mark Twain

"Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain

"Hire a teenager while they still know it all."
-Anon.

"The light at the end of the tunnel is at the wrong end."
-Anon.

"When everything comes your way, you're in the wrong lane."
-Anon.

"Enough research will tend to support your theory."
-Anon.

"Know thyself. If you need help, call the CIA."
-Anon.

"Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."
-Anon.

"One good turn gets most of the blankets."
-Anon.

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."
-Mark Twain

"We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened."
-Mark Twain

"Two wrongs are only the beginning."
-Anon.

"One of their children, Cain, once asked, 'Am I my brother's son?'"
-Student Bloopers

"Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly."
-Batman Costume warning label

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."
-Mark Twain

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them."
-Mark Twain

"Life is anything that dies when you stomp it."
-Anon.

"Winning isn't the most important thing. It's the ONLY thing."
-Anon.

"God Bless America, but God help Canada to put up with them!"
-Anon.

"The light at the end of a tunnel may be an oncoming train."
-Anon.

"Gerald Ford was unknown throughout America. Now he's unknown throughout the world."
-Anon.

"Jesus is coming, everyone look busy."
-Bumper Sticker

"A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory."
-Bumper Sticker

"An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance."
-Anon.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
-Mark Twain

"We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it."
-Mark Twain, Mark Twain at Your Fingertips

Richard Wagner:
"A composer whose music is better than it sounds."
-Mark Twain

"Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy." Cynthia Nelms

"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead." Scottish Proverb

"If at first you do succeed, try not to look astonished."
-Bumper Sticker

"Help wanted telepath: you know where to apply"
-Bumper Sticker

"I.R.S.: We've got what it takes to take what you've got."
-Bumper Sticker

"Choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color. Choosing your socks by their character makes no sense, and choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable."
-Anon.

"An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until eventually he knows everything about nothing."
-Anon.

Jimmy Carter:
"He would cut the cards if he was playing poker with his mother."
-Anon.

Eiffel Tower:
"The Empire State Building after taxes."
-Anon.

Katharine Hepburn:
"A cross between Donald Duck and a Stradivarius."
-Anon.

"He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened."
-Anon.

"The journey is the reward."
-Taoist Saying

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
-Anon.

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself."
-Chinese Proverb

"I am a student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate me."
-Slogan of the Free Speech Movement, 1964.

"The NeXT Computer: The hardware makes it a PC, the software makes it a workstation, the unit sales makes it a mainframe."
-Anon.

"The world will end in 5 minutes. Please log out..."
-Anon.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."
-Anon.

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."
-Anon.

John F. Kennedy:
"The enviably attractive nephew who sings an Irish ballad for the company and then winsomely disappears before the table clearing and dishwashing begin."
-Lyndon B. Johnson

"Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes."
-Anon.

"Golf scores are directly proportional to the number of witnesses."
-Anon.

-- Mother Teresa
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
We can do no great things - only small things with great love

"A little greed can get you lots of stuff."
-Anon.

"After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat."
-Anon.

"Atheists have no invisible means of support."
-Anon.

Quotes 5

On the stars:

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of the billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things within that enormous immensity.
- Werner von Braun

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for insects as well as for the stars. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance.
- Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation it would appear that God has a special fondness for stars and beetles.
- J. B. S. Haldane, 1892 - 1964

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
- Richard Feynman

On loss of liberty:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purpose is beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well but without understanding.
- Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis

Liberty wasn't guaranteed by the Constitution. It was only given a chance.
- Stephen Chapman

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
- Thomas Jefferson

The tendency of all strong Governments has always been to suppress liberty, partly in order to ease the processes of rule, partly from sheer disbelief in innovation.
- J.A. Hobson

You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.
- Barry Goldwater

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.
- Christopher Morely

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
- Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire, 1694 - 1778

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
- Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
- Brandan Francis Behan, 1923 - 1964

October 25, 2001:

Pablo Picasso Lopez was born at Malaga, Spain on this day in 1881. Legend says that young Picasso once painted a picture so compelling that his artist father gathered up his own brushes and gave them to the son, never to paint again. His images made a profound affect on the world, his words aren't bad, either.

An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
- All today's quotes are from Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973

***

The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.

Talent alone won't make you a success. Neither will being in the right place at the right time, unless you are ready. The most important question is: "Are your ready?"

My success just evolved from working hard at the business at hand each day.

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.
- All today's quotes are from Johnny Carson

***

On copies:

They copied all they could follow
but they couldn't copy my mind
so I left them sweating and stealing
a year and a half behind.
- Joseph Rudyard Kipling, 1865 - 1936

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.
- Rebecca West

Every kind of imitation speaks, the person that imitates is inferior to him whom he imitates, as the copy is to the original.
- Robert South

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.
- Wilson Mizner, 1876 - 1933

We are all born originals - why is it so many of us die copies?
- Edward Young, 1683 - 1765

Space:

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
- Marshall McLuhan

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.
- John Muir

Clay is moulded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing.... Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize the utility of what is not.
- Lao Tze

The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
- Merrick Furst

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
- Wernher von Braun

October 18, 2001

I loved watching Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the powerful wake he left behind. There are few politicians I admire, and it can hardly be said that I agreed with his concept of the role of government, but he had a powerful mind and he never flinched from his vision and faith in Canada. Shortly after he died last year I issued a set of his quotes that somehow didn't get sent out, at least not to the whole list, so I'm repeating most of it today, which would have been his 82nd birthday.

Edward Fenner, a Canadian subscriber, provided a few additional quotes to add to my own collection, and shared these parting words about the late statesman:

"What John F. Kennedy was to America, so Pierre Elliot Trudeau was to Canada. Loved by many, despised my others, but respected by nearly all. Trudeau was an intellectual, an icon, a visionary, a passionate nationalist who didn't take crap from anybody. He was arrogant, but he was cool and very hip.

"In a word: Trudeaumania. He was the world's first 'Rock Star Politician' - The Elvis of politics. He was smart, sharp-tongued, and a keen wit. He drove a red convertible, clowned for the camera, and turned the country on its collective ear. Women were wild for him and every man wanted to shake his hand or punch him in the mouth. He followed his predecessor Lester Pearson's lead and put Canada solidly on the international map like never before. His influence was vast. He touched us all and helped us grow up as a nation and got us all to think for, and of, ourselves.

"He was Canada's 16th Prime Minister (1968-1984, less nine months). His most significant achievement was repatriating the Constitution from England and creating the Canadian Bill of Rights."

And the quotes:

I bear solemn witness to the fact that NATO heads of state and of government meet only to go through the tedious motions of reading speeches, drafted by others, with the principal objective of not rocking the boat.

Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant: No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
- 25 March 1969 at the Press Club, Washington City

So long, trained seals!
- parting shot after a news conference

I went home, discussed it with the boys, put them to bed. I walked until midnight in the storm, then I went home and took a sauna for an hour and a half. It was all clear. I listened to my heart and saw if there were any signs of my destiny in the sky, and there were none - there were just snowflakes.
- announcing his decision to resign as Canada's Prime Minister

The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.

It is wonderful to be despised, if, deep down, we know we are right.
- All today's quotes are from Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919-2000)

October 17, 2001

As we follow the progress of the forces at war in Afghanistan, we know that peace is the goal. Today's quotes are on that theme, specifically triggered by noting that it was on this date in 1979 that Mother Teresa received her Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the poor at Calcutta.

There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and in peace.
- Bourke Coekran

Vast and fearsome as the human scene has become, personal contact of the right people, in the right places, at the right time, may yet have a potent and valuable part to play in the cause of peace which is in our hearts.
- Winston Churchill

The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace.
- Nikita Khrushchev

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
- Albert Einstein

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
- Baruch Spinoza

Audentis Fortuna iuvat. (Fortune assists the bold.)

As the twig is bent the tree inclines.

Possunt quia posse videntur. (They are able because they think they are able.)
- The Aeneid

Omnia amor vincit: et nos cedamus amori. (Love conquers all things; let us, too, surrender to love.)
- Ecologues

Some trickery is here. Trojans, do not trust in the horse. Whatever it may be, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.
- The Aeneid

Latet anguis in herba. (There's a snake hidden in the grass.)
- Today's quotes are all from Virgil, 70 - 19 BC

The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later.
- Confucius

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and Third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
- Confucius

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
- Confucius

Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.
- Confucius

Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.
- Confucius

On direction:

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.
- W. H. Auden

If you board the wrong train, it's no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving - we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

If you cry Forward! you must without fail make plain in what direction to go. Don't you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in directions precisely opposite?
- Anton Chekhov, 1860 - 1904

A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses.
- Henry Louis Mencken

On teachers and teaching:

The point is to develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition and to guide the child over to important fields for society. Such a school demands from the teacher that he be a kind of artist in his province.
- Albert Einstein

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William A. Ward

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
- Gail Kathleen Godwin

If kids come to us [teachers] from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important.
- Barbara Colorose

I'm never going to be a movie star. But then, in all probability, Liz Taylor is never going to teach first and second grade.
- Mary J. Wilson, Elementary school teacher

We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You just can't accept it and leave in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep watering it, really look after it and nurture it.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

We reckoned we could make it because there were four of us. None of us could've made it alone, because Paul wasn't quite strong enough, I didn't have enough girl appeal, George was too quiet, and Ringo was the drummer. But we thought that everyone would be able to dig at least one of us, and that's how it turned out.

Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. After I made the loaves, I felt like I had conquered something. But as I watched the bread being eaten, I thought, Well, don't I get a gold record or knighted or nothing?

Everything is clearer when you're in love.
- All today's quotes are from John Lennon, 1940 - 1980

Laws to suppress tend to strengthen what they would prohibit. This is the fine point on which all the legal professions of history have based their job security.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
- All today's quotes are from Frank Herbert, October 8, 1920 - 1986

**

On curiosity:

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.
- Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
- Anatole France, 1844 - 1924

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
- Ellen Parr

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
- James Stephens, 1882 - 1950

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
- Walt Disney

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A cathedral, a wave of storm, a dancer's leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.
- Marcel Proust

Keep high aspirations, moderate expectations, and small needs.
- William Howard Stein

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will themselves not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.
- Daniel H. Burnham

The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways the highest adventure on earth.
- Norman Cousins

"Out of our beliefs are born deeds
out of our deeds we form habits
out of our habits grows our character
and on our character we build our destiny."

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

**

Realism has always been called cynicism.

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.
- All today's quotes are from Gore Vidal

**

"Strive for integrity
That means knowing your values in life
and behaving in a way that is consistent with those values."

- Anonymous

"Do not look where you fell,
but where you slipped."

"Sometimes if you are not sure about something,
you just have to jump off the bridge and grow your wings on the way down."

**

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself - always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense ... human rights invented America.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.
- All today's quotes are from James Earl Carter, Jr

"You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you're
sitting on your butt. And who wants to leave buttprints in the
sands of time?
- Bob Moawad

**

Life is moderately good play with a badly written third act.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.

The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman, because he'll come sleep in your closet rather than spend ten shillings on a hotel.
- All today's quotes are from Truman Capote, 1924 - 1984

**

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.

Delay always breeds danger and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.

Fear is sharp-sighted, and can see things under ground, and much more in the skies.

It is the part of a wise man to keep himself to-day for to-morrow, and not to venture all his eggs in one basket.

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
- All today's quotes are from Miguel de Cervantes

**

Quotes:

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's. -- Jean Paul Richter

Analysts say that gasoline may go to $3 a gallon. So your SUV might stand for stationary utility vehicle.
-- Jay Leno

September 27, 2001

Samuel Adams, born on this date in 1722, was one of the most outspoken of America's founding fathers. Because he was a brewer by profession and the organizer of the Boston Tea Party I was tempted to make beverages today's theme, but I think this set of Adams' serious quotes is more worthy

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
- Samuel Adams, 1722 - 1803

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.
- Samuel Adams, 1722 - 1803

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last resort.
- Samuel Adams, 1722 - 1803

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
- Samuel Adams, 1722 - 1803

Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.
- Samuel Adams, speech to Continental Congress, 1 August 1776

Nature:

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.
- Clarence Day

Nature cares nothing for our logic, our human logic; she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crunched under its wheel.
- Turgenev

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the Human species, including Americans.
- Adlai Stevenson

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
- Robert Green Ingersoll

Nature is a hanging judge.
- Anonymous

An hour:

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
- D. H.Lawrence

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'
- Winston Churchill

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
- Albert Einstein

With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
- Ransom K. Ferm

September 23, 2001

The Greek tragic playwright Euripides was born at Attica on this day in 484 BC - although with what precision the date is known is questionable when different sources put the year at 480 or 485. I note that there are quite a few entries from him in the database, and I've only ever used one. So let's catch up with this prolific author today

Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.

A bad beginning makes a bad ending.

Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.

Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife.

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.

Youth is the best time to be rich; and the best time to be poor.
- All today's quotes are from Euripides, 484 - 406 BC

On birthdays:

For all the advances in medicine, there is still no cure for the common birthday.
- John Glenn, Jr

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
- Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

My Birthday! what a different sound
That word had in my youthful ears;
And how each time the day comes round,
Less and less white its mark appears.
- Thomas Moore, 1779 - 1852

Pleas'd to look forward, pleas'd to look behind,
And count each birthday with a grateful mind.
- Alexander Pope, 1688 - 1744

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.
- Robert Lynd

***

It was on this day in 1895 that brothers Charles E. and J. Frank Duryea incorporated the first American auto manufacturer, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company at Springfield, Massachusetts. The company only lasted three years, but look what it lead to! Today's quotes are a humorous look at America's love affair with the automobile.

September 21, 2001

Americans are a broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman; but if a man doesn't drive there's something wrong with him.
- Art Buchwald

You know you're out of power when your limousine is yellow and your driver speaks Farsi.
- James Baker

It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
- E. L. Doctorow

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
- Mary Ellen Kelly

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic background, is that we all believe we are above-average drivers.
- Dave Barry

ON CONQUEST:

Energy and persistence conquer all thing.
- Benjamin Franklin

The will to conquer is the first condition of victory.
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.
- Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769 - 1821

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
- Sun Tzu

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.
- Aristotle

On news and journalism:

Of course the government and the newspapers lie. But in a democracy, they're not the _same_ lies.
- Steve Jackson

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
- Thomas Jefferson

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
- A. J. Liebling

Journalism is literature in a hurry.
- Matthew Arnold, 1822 - 1888

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.
- Karl Kraus

On simplicity:

The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes.
- C. S. Lewis

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.
- Alexander Pope

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein

Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.
- Robert Orben

Quotes 4

On peace

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
- Benjamin Franklin

Peace is not something you wish for; it's something you make, something you do, something you are, something you give away.
- Robert Fulghum

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
- Mohandas Gandhi

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
- Helen Keller

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
- A. J. Muste

On revenge

For mere vengeance I would do nothing. This nation is too great to look for mere revenge. But for the security of the future I would do everything.
- James Abram Garfield, 1831 - 1881 Speech on Lincoln's assassination, 15 April 1865

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.
- Francis Bacon, Of Revenge

All the while thou studiest revenge, thou art tearing thine own wound open.
- Thomas Fuller, 1608 - 1661

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King, Jr, 1929 - 1968

Revenge is a dish that should be eaten cold.
- English proverb

September 14, 2001

Today has been declared as an official day to honor the victims and heroes of 11 September's attacks, at least in the US and UK and possibly other countries as well. We honor the memory of those who lost their lives, were wounded, or responded to help the wounded. Our quotes today are especially in memory of the passengers of two flights who may have acted to minimize the losses on the ground, and for the emergency personnel killed in the collapse of the buildings..

In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
- Aristotle

A man has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient, unprofitable or dangerous to do so.
- Walter Lippmann

I believe it is the nature of people to be heroes, given the chance.
- James A. Autry

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
- Will Rogers

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.
- John Calvin Coolidge, 1872 - 1933

On security, after the tragedy of 9-11

Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.
- Germaine Greer

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.
- H. L. Mencken

Clearly, security without values is like a ship without a rudder. But values without security are like a rudder without a ship.
- Henry Kissinger

It isn't for the moment you are struck that you need courage but for the long uphill climb back to sanity and faith and security.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

September 12, 2001

My reactions to yesterday morning's atrocities at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are numerous, as the story dominates our attention and continues to develop it is likely to suggest my choices of quotes through the week. But for now I'm going to take the advice of a reader who suggested that prayer is the proper response - and for most of us it should be our first response.

Prayer opens the heart to God, and it is the means by which the soul, though empty, is filled by God.
- John Bunyan, 1628 - 1688

The fewer the words, the better the prayer.
- Martin Luther, 1483 - 1546

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.
- Mohandas Gandhi

Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask but when we are challenged to be what we can be.
- Morris Adler

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.
- Mark Twain

**

Why doesn't the past decently bury itself, instead of sitting waiting to be admired by the present?

I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.

The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.

Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love; only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.

When one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere.

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.
- All today's quotes are from David Herbert Lawrence, 1885 - 1930

On traveling

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
- William Least Heat Moon

It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.
- Charles Kuralt, 1934 - 1997

The road to a friend's house is never long.
- Danish proverb

And the wind shall say: Here were decent godless people. Their only monument the asphalt road. And a thousand lost golf balls.
- T. S. Eliot, 1885 - 1968

Still round the corner there may wait,
a new road or a secret gate.
- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1892 - 1973

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.

The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
- All today's qutoes are from Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, 1828 - 1910

On lions

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.
- African proverb

Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.
- Alfred Victor Vigny, 1797 - 1863

At 20 a man is a peacock, at 30 a lion, at 40 a camel, at 50 a serpent, at 60 a dog, at 70 an ape, and at 80 nothing.
- Baltasar Gracian, 1601 - 1656

It's better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
- Sister Elizabeth Kenny, 1880 - 1952

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
- Woody Allen

The heart:

The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.
- Helen Keller

Without a rich heart wealth is an ugly beggar.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.
- Martin Luther

Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everybody's heart.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world.
- Joseph Conrad

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Mothier was born on this day in 1757. His father died when he was two, when he was thirteen his mother died as well, leaving him with a substantial fortune. At age 16 he had graduated from the Military Academy at Versailles and was a captain in the French cavalry. In 1777 when he came to America to fight against the British he was known as the Marquis de Lafayette. He led Revolutionary troops to several major victories, but contributed mostly by training Washington's troops at Valley Forge after insisting on and supervising basic sanitation in that camp.

In the eyes of the people, the general who wins a battle has made no mistakes.
- Voltaire

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.
- Daniel Webster

These are times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country.
- Thomas Paine

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.
- Marquis de Lafayette

Haec Manus Inimica Tyrannis (This Company is an enemy to tyranny.)
- Marquis de Lafayette, inscription on infantry banner

Sept 5, 2001

Today is "Be Late For Something Day" - an annual holiday sponsored by the Procrastinator's Club of America. I can relate, being such a talented procrastinator myself that I haven't yet sent in my 1976 dues payment. Of course, they never actually got around to billing me because I still haven't sent in my membership application. With that demonstration of deferral prowess they're likely to elect me president, if they ever get around to holding the election.

On procrastination:

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing. And from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking and from that to incivility and procrastination.
- Thomas De Quincy

Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill.
- Christopher Parker

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.
- Aaron Burr

Procrastination is my sin.
It brings me naught but sorrow.
I know that I should stop it.
In fact, I will - tomorrow!
- Gloria Pitzer

Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.
- Victor Kiam

On collaboration:

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.
- Aldous Leonard Huxley, 1894 - 1963

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
- André Gide, 1869 - 1951

The mind itself is an art object. It is a Mondrian canvas onto whose homemade grids it fits its own preselected products. Our knowledge is contextual and only contextual. Ordering and invention coincide: we call their collaboration knowledge.
- Annie Dillard

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881 - 1955

On labor:

No human pursuit achieves dignity unless it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that the other things - the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold - were false to you.
- Beryl Markham

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.
- Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

Manual labor to my father was not only good and decent for it's own sake but, as he was given to saying, it straightened out one's thoughts.
- Mary Ellen Chase

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.
- Robert Benchley

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.
- Doug Larson

Phones:

Communism is like one big phone company.
- Lenny Bruce

Excuse me, I have to use the toilet. Actually, I have to use the telephone, but I'm too embarrassed to say so.
- Dorothy Rothschild Parker

The telephone is the greatest nuisance among conveniences, the greatest convenience among nuisances.
- Robert Staughton Lynd

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three - and paradise is when you have none.
- Doug Larson

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.
- Christopher Morley

"There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness."

--Josh Billings

American blacks:

When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That's progress?
- Marilyn French

Senator, I am one of them. You do not seem to understand who I am. I am a black woman, the daughter of a dining-car worker ... If my life has any meaning at all, it is that those who start out as outcasts can wind up as being part of the system.
- Patricia Roberts Harris, 1924 - 1985

The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.
- Mary McLeod Bethune, 1875 - 1955

The Negro says, "Now." Others say, "Never." The voice of responsible Americans says, "Together." There is no other way.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908 - 1973

Rules of the game:

Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.
- Joseph Brodsky

If life doesn't offer a game worth playing, then invent a new one.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
- Chinese proberb

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
- Jawaharlal Nehru

One wonders what would happen in a society in which there were no rules to break. Doubtless everyone would quickly die of boredom.
- Susan Howitch

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Give me a couple of years, and I'll make that actress an overnight success.

I don't think anyone should write his autobiography until after he's dead.

I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.

Spare no expense to make everything as economical as possible.
- All today's quotes are from Samuel Goldwyn, 1882 - 1974

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born at Frankfurt am Main, Germany on this day in 1749. By the time he was sent to Leipzig to study law at age 15 he spoke six languages. As a poet, novelist, and dramatist he practically defined German intellectual activity for much of his adult life, he also was a scientist and pursued geology, botany, anatomy, physics, and the history of science. Narrowing down the dozens of Goethe quotations in the database to these few was difficult.

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action

Whatever liberates our spirit without giving us self-control is disastrous.

Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be, and he will become as he can and should be.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
- All of today's quotes are from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 - 1832

On music and arts:

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another ... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

Any great work of art ... revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.
- All today's quotes are from Leonard Bernstein, 1918 - 1990

On risk:

To get profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work, is as impossible as it is to live without being born.
- A. P. Gouthev

If you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
- Erica Jong

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
- T. S. Eliot

The moment somebody says 'this is very risky' is the moment it becomes attractive to me.
- Kate Capshaw

I don't think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go.
- Lillian Carter

Optimist/pessimist

"Although I think I am optimistic overall, I do find myself vacillating. Maybe that's because I'm on the cusp of Mr Twain's dichotomy - it happens that I am 48. Or as some wag wrote on a college bathroom wall, "An optimist says the glass is half full, a pessimist replies that it is half empty, but an engineer says that it is simply twice as big as needed for optimal efficiency."

--Van (the man who sends out the quotes of the day.)

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
- Mark Twain

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
- William Arthur Ward

When I look at the world I'm pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.
- Carl Rogers, 1902 -1987

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
- James Branch Cabell, 1879 - 1958

It doesn't hurt to be optimistic. You can always cry later.
- Lucimar Santos de Lima

On kisses:

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point. That's the basic spelling that every woman ought to know.
- Mistinguette

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Jack was out kissing babies while I was out passing bills. Someone had to tend the store.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772 - 1834

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.
- Sir Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965

On poverty

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
- Samuel Johnson

Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
- William Corbett

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
- Mother Teresa

Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things.
- Eric Butterworth

Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
- Jean Paul Richter

**

Bernard M. Baruch was born at Camden, South Carolina on this day in 1870. He made his millions on Wall Street as a broker and investor. He resisted regulation of the investment industry but became chairman of the War Industries Board during World War I and represented the US at the Versailles Peace Conference. He advised every US president from Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy, here are a few examples.

Aug 19, 2001

During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything everynight before you go to bed.

Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
- All today's quotes are from Bernard Baruch, 1870 - 1965

**

On shopping:

A newspaper reported that I spent $30,000 a year buying Paris clothes and that women hate me for it. I couldn't spend that much unless I wore sable underwear.
- Jacqueline Kennedy

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.
- Elayne Boosler

A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
- William Feather

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?
- Richard Nixon

I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist.
- Tammy Faye Baker

On sex:

I find the three major problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni, and parking for the faculty.
- Clark Kerr

In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.
- Marlene Dietrich

If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?
- Bette Midler

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.
- Hunter S. Thompson

Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions.
- Woody Allen

**

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

An army marches on its stomach.
- All today's quotes are from Napoleon Bonaparte, April 15, 1769 - 1821

**

On friendship:

Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.
- Carmen Sylva

Those truly linked don't need correspondence, When they meet again after many years apart, Their friendship is as true as ever.
- Deng Ming-Dao

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.
- Socrates

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.
- Thomas Jefferson

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106 - 43 BC

On fright:

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
- Duke of Wellington

We are restless because of incessant change, but we would be frightened if change were stopped.
- Lyman Lloyd Bryson

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Eric Hoffer

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
- Mauritis Cornelius Escher

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
- Alfred Hitchcock, born August 13, 1899

Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the
music. -- George Carlin

**

"The ego is the ugly little troll that lives underneath
the bridge between your mind and your heart."

"If nature has made you a giver,
your hands are born open,
and so is your heart.
And though there may be times when
your hands are empty,
your heart is always full,
and you can give things out of that."

It's simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say,..... and then
just don't say it. -- Sam Levenson

I have enough money to last me the rest of my life.......unless I buy
something. -- Jackie Mason

**

On the pencil

Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!
- Gotthold Lessing

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.
- Joyce A. Myers

To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it.
- Josh Jenkins

We are all pencils in the hand of God.
- Mother Teresa, 1910 - 1997

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead.
- Robert Brault

**

Too bad that all the people who know how to run this country are busy driving
taxi cabs and cutting hair. -George Burns

I wanted to be an atheist, but I gave it up. They have no holidays. -- Henny
Youngman

On the Vietnam War:

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now. Rarely have so many people been so wrong about so much. Never have the consequences of their misunderstanding been so tragic.
- Richard M. Nixon

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles.... What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.
- Henry Kissinger

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on [them].
- Senator James William Fulbright

On statistics:

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
- George Bernard Shaw

There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.
- Ian Hart, British actor

The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
- Art Buchwald

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
- Mark Twain

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
- Rex Todhunter Stout

On invention:

We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we invented, which was human liberty.
- Mark Twain

The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil.
- Isaac Taylor

Every game ever invented by mankind, is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!
- John Anthony Ciardi

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success.... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.
- Nikola Tesla

**

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it.

It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

The question "Who ought to be boss?" is like as "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor.
- All today's quotes are from Henry Ford

**

On peace:

You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.
- Yitzhak Rabin

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
- André Gide

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
- Aesop

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
- Henry Miller

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
- John Foster Dulles

On noses:

Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.
- Max L. Forman

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, 1841 - 1935

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
- Sam Ewing

If the camel once gets his nose in a tent, his body will soon follow.
- Saudi Arabian proverb

When you are down and out something always turns up - and it is usually the noses of your friends.
- George Orson Welles, 1915 - 1985

"Success ... seems to be connected with action. Successful men
keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."

--Conrad Hilton

**

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
- All today's quotes are from George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

**

A nation without dregs and malcontents is orderly, peaceful and pleasant, but perhaps without the seed of things to come.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

The misery of a child is interesting to a mother, the misery of a young man is interesting to a young woman, the misery of an old man is interesting to nobody.
- All today's quotes are from Eric Hoffer, 1902 - 1983

***

I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.

Pure love and suspicion cannot dwell together: at the door where the latter enters, the former makes its exit.

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.

All for one, one for all.
- Today's quotes are all from Alexandre Dumas, père

On mystery:

I, for one, get rather annoyed when I settle into a nice bubble bath with some Belgian chocolate and a mystery at my side only to discover that all of the characters in the latter are still alive at the end.
- Miriam Nadel

As a rule, said Holmes, the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
- Raymond Chandler, 1888 - 1959

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say
- Raymond Chandler

[Chess is] as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
- Raymond Chandler

On newspapers and the media:

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
- Karl Kraus

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

To love what you do and feel that it matters - how could anything be more fun?
- Katharine Graham

A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life - what people are interested in. That's journalism.
- Burton Rascoe

People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart.
- Howard Simons

On quotations:

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
- Marlene Dietrich

Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
- Simeon Strunsky

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.
- Benjamin Disraeli

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
- George Bernard Shaw

On praise:

There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
- Roger Ascham

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even, than what he condemns, of his character, information, and abilities. No wonder, then, that most people are so shy of praising anything.
- August W. Hare

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
- Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784

Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement and we will make the goal.
- Jerome P. Fleishman

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.
- Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519

On money:

Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.
- Helen Gurley Brown

The only thing I like about rich people is their money.
- Nancy Astor

Money will come when you are doing the right thing.
- Mike Phillips

When a fellow says, It ain't the money but the principle of the thing, it's the money.
- Kin Hubbard

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.
- Everett McKinley Dirksen

On dance:

Discourse on virtue and they pass by in droves. Whistle and dance the shimmy, and you've got an audience.
- Laertius Diogenes

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.
- Edward Estlin Cummings, 1894 - 1962

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
- Agnes De Mille, 1905 - 1993

While I dance I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. That is why I dance.
- Hans Bos

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.
- Faith Whittlesey

Today is Saint Swithin's Day. On this day in 971 the remains of Swithun, the late Bishop of Winchester, were translated (moved) into the new cathedral. Many miraculous cures were reported and torrents of rain fell from the clouds that day. Legend says that if it rains today it will continue to rain for 40 days. For my area, we're supposed to have clouds today, but no rain until Monday.

St Swithin’s Day, July 15. On rain:

I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.
- Clint Eastwood

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
- Satchel Paige

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
- Jerry Chin

As against having beautiful workshops, studios, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
- Van Wyck Brooks

Every man has a rainy corner of his life whence comes foul weather which follows him.
- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

On prison:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!
- Patrick Henry

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand.
- J. Michael Straczynski

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
- Bertrand Russell

The White House is the finest prison in the world.
- Harry S Truman

Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one sees the stars.
- Frederick Langbridge

**

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
- All today's quotes are from Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862

**

On assumptions:

One of the most difficult things to contend with in a hospital is the assumption on the part of the staff that because you have lost your gall bladder you have also lost your mind.
- Jean Kerr

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once and a while, or the light won't come in.
- Alan Alda

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
- Igor Stravinsky

The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there's gold in letting go of them.
- John Seely Brown, Fast Company

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.
- Milton R. Sapirstein

On laws and lawyers:

It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work, it usually takes another hundred years to get rid of it.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
- Jean Anouilh

Animals have these advantages over man: They have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
- Voltaire

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
- Plato

He saw a lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill hard, by his own stable
And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother, Abel.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A few cutting remarks:

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
- Washington Irving

The politician is ... trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.
- Edward Roscoe Murrow, 1908 - 1965

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
- James Russell Lowell, 1819 - 1891

If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
- Abraham Lincoln

On light:

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.
- Taylor Benson

The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my eye can catch one-million-year-old light. It does no harm to the mystery to know a little about it.
- Richard Feynman

One cool judgment is worth a dozen hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
- Woodrow Wilson

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- Plato

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
- Sir Rabindranath Tagore

From Robert Heinlein:

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss.
- as Lazarus Long

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.

Self awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together.

- Robert A. Heinlein, 1907 - 1988

On honesty:

Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
- Walter Anderson

The elegance of honesty needs no adornment.
- Merry Browne

Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.
- William Shakespeare

Every act of dishonesty has at least two victims: the one we think of as the victim, and the perpetrator as well. Each little dishonesty ... makes another little rotten spot somewhere in the perpetrator's psyche.
- Lesley Conger

None meet life honestly and few heroically.
- Clarence Seward Darrow, 1857 - 1938

On counting:

Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.
- Miguel de Cervantes

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.
- Dr. Robert H. Schuller

Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best.
- Bob Talbert

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
- Jean Paul Getty, 1892 - 1976

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
- Oscar Wilde

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
- Albert Einstein

Envy is the art of counting the other fellow's blessings instead of your own.
- Harold Coffin

On neighbors:

A man is called selfish, not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's
- Richard Whateley

The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.
- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1911 - 1978

Because I'm technologically able to find a like-minded person on the other side of the globe, I'm also more interested in making friends with my next-door neighbor.
- Jeffrey Klein

A neighbor is a person who can get to your house in less than a minute and takes two hours to go back home.
- O. A. Battista

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

On shoes:

What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?
- Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1474 - 1564

Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago?
- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon, Director of Advertising at Macy's

Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out.
- Italian proverb

I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes - and the stars through his soul.
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, if he gets angry, he'll be a mile away - and barefoot.
- Sarah Jackson

On Canada:

That long [Canadian] frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, guarded only by neighborly respect and honorable obligations, is an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.
- Sir Winston Churchill

In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations - it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.
- Stuart Keate

For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say Canada. Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the US

I accept now with equanimity the question so constantly addressed to me, "Are you an American?" and merely return the accurate answer, "Yes, I am a Canadian."
- Lester Bowles Pearson, 1897 - 1972, Canadian Prime Minister 1963 - 1968

We wish nothing more, but we will accept nothing less. Masters in our own house we must be, but our house is the whole of Canada.
- Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1919 - 2000

Summer:

Summer: The time of year that children slam the door they left open all winter.
- Anonymous

The quality of life, which in the ardour of spring was personal and sexual, becomes social in midsummer.
- Henry Beston

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
- Henry James

A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken.
- James Dent

Steep thyself in a bowl of summertime.
- Virgil, 70 - 19 BC

On regret:

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never look back. We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
- Mary McCarthy

It is better to look ahead and prepare than to look back and regret.
- J. J. Kersee

Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it is good only for wallowing.
- Katherine Mansfield

I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret ... if you have any sense .... And if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.
- Katharine Hepburn

On deadlines:

Homework, root canals, and deadlines are the important things in life, and only when we have these major dramas taken care of can we presume to look at the larger questions.
- Cynthia Heimel

A perfect method for adding drama to life is to wait until the deadline looms large.
- Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby, Procrastinator's Success Kit

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.
- Rita Mae Brown

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
- Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 - 2001

On destiny:

It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
- Winston Churchill

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
- Kin Hubbard

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.
- Tryon Edwards, 1809 - 1894

There is a destiny which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.
- William Shakespeare

On fathers;

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
- Bertrand Russell

It's clear that most children suffer too much mother and too little father.
- Gloria Steinem

John Elway is a great football player. He used to be my son. Now I’m his father.
- Jack Elway

I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in 50 years what my father taught by example in one week.
- Mario Matthew Cuomo

A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. If only sons could see the paradox, they would understand the dilemma.
- Marlene Dietrich, 1901 - 1992

On speeches:

Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
- Ambrose Bierce

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.
- James Earl Jones

My father gave me these hints on speech-making: Be sincere, be brief, be seated.
- James Roosevelt

A speech is a solemn responsibility. The man who makes a bad thirty-minute speech to two hundred people wastes only a half hour of his own time. But he wastes one hundred hours of the audience's time - more than four days - which should be a hanging offense.
- Jenkin Lloyd Jones

A speech is like a love affair. Any fool can start it, but to end it requires considerable skill.
- Lord Mancroft

**

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work;
I want to achieve immortality through not dying.

- Woody Allen (1935-)

"We do not stop playing because we grow old;
we grow old because we stop playing."

- Anonymous

On youth:

Older generations are living proof that younger generations can survive their lunacy.
- Cullen Hightower

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in.... Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood.
- Peter Medawar

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
- Quentin Crisp

Youth is the gay and pleasant spring of life, when joy is stirring in the dancing blood, and nature calls us with a thousand songs to share her general feast.
- Joseph Ridgeway

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
- Albert Einstein

On slavery:

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
- Henry David Thoreau

There is a terrible war coming, and these young men who have never seen war cannot wait for it to happen, but I tell you, I wish that I owned every slave in the South, for I would free them all to avoid this war.
- Robert E. Lee

If this world were what it seems it should be, it is clear that it would be impossible for one man to enslave another.
- Voltaire

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
- Helen Keller

On education:

My education began with a set of blocks which had on them the Roman numerals and the letters of the alphabet. It is not yet finished.
- Calvin Coolidge

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
- Jacques Barzun

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- William Butler Yeats

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.
- Nancy Astor

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
- Anatole France, 1844 - 1924

The most valuable result of all education is to make you do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
- Thomas Huxley

Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
- Sydney J. Harris

The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.
- Bishop Mandell Creighton

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
- Sydney J. Harris

"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
- George Mason, said during Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification
convention in 1788.

On money:

The most popular labor-saving device is still money.
- Phyllis George

A chest of gold coins or a fat wallet of bills is of no use whatsoever to a wrecked sailor alone on a raft.
- Alan Watts

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well.
- Margaret Thatcher

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
- Dorothy Rothschild Parker

This planet has or rather had a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasnt the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
- Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 - 2001

On diamonds:

Let us not be too particular: it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
- Mark Twain

Be like a postage stamp - stick to one thing until you get there.
- Josh Billings

Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.
- Malcolm Forbes

No pressure, no diamonds.
- Mary Case

I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor

On fashion:

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.
- Quentin Crisp

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
- George Bernard Shaw

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- Oscar Wilde

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
- Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
- Jean Cocteau

"It is far better to be trusted and respected
that it is to be liked."

- Anonymous

**

If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you

I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture.

An architect's most useful tools are an eraser at the drafting board, and a wrecking bar at the site.

The truth is more important than the facts.

Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.
- All today's quotes are from Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867 - 1959

**

On battle:

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

All great stories have three acts. In the first act, the heroes are introduced to great fanfare. In the second, the heroes, on the verge of victory, stumble and take a fall. And in the third act, the heroes return, victorious, to win the battle.
- Ted Leonsis

Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars.
- General George Catlett Marshall, 1880 - 1959

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.
- General Omar Nelson Bradley, 1893 - 1981

Carry the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive. And don't ever apologize for anything.
- Harry S Truman

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly,
while bad people will find a way around the laws.

- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

On economists:

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
- Edmund Burke

It is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.
- John Maynard Keynes, 1883 - 1946

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
- John Maynard Keynes

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
- Adam Smith, 1723 - 1790

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
- Kelvin Throop III

On goodbyes:

Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.
- Tryon Edwards

Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
- Richard David Bach

It is never any good dwelling on goodbyes. It is not the being together that it prolongs, it is the parting.
- Elizabeth Asquith Bibesco

Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell; like the glaciers, which are transparent and rosy-hued only at sunrise and sunset, but throughout the day are gray and cold.
- Jean Paul Richter

Although you may remain somewhere for a long time,
It is certain that you will have to leave;
Whatever may be the manner of parting,
The actual going cannot be avoided.
- Nagarjuna

On breakfast;

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
- Oscar Wilde

The breakfast of champions is not cereal, it's the opposition.
- Nick Seitz

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
- Winston Churchill

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast.
- Konrad Lorenz

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
- Max Beerbohm

**

It is the test of a good religion whether you can make a joke about it.

When [a politician] is in opposition, he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it. In short, when he is impotent he proves to us that the thing is easy; and when he is omnipotent he proves that it is impossible.

There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.

Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and prefer mercy

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
- Today's qutoes are all from G. K. Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

**

On war:

It is well that war is so terrible - we shouldn't grow too fond of it.
- Robert E. Lee

Arms are instruments of ill omen.... When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish. There is no glory in victory, and to glorify it despite this is to exult in the killing of men.... When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe mourning rites.
- Lao-Tzu

In a war of ideas, it is people who get killed.
- Stanislaus J. Lec

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1917 - 1963

On the swiftly passing years:

If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse, you may be dead.
- Frank Gelett Burgess

For years a secret shame destroyed my peace - I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece. But now I think a thought that brings me hope: Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
- Justin Richardson

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up wrinkles the soul.
- Douglas MacArthur

Looking forward into an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, because one finds therein no recognition. The years behind have a friendly aspect, and they are warmed by the fires we have kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes of our own voices.
- Alexander Smith

Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr

On travel:

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
- St. Augustine

The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.
- Louis L'Amour, Ride the Dark Trail

Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life.
- Agatha Christie

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.
- Benjamin Disraeli

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
- Mark Twain

**

Body: A thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors and a misfit from the start.

If a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider.

That which we do not call education is more precious than that which we call so.

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

I hate quotations.
- All today's quotes are from Ralph Waldo Emerson

**

On love:

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
- Henry Van Dyke

They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
- Tom Bodett

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.
- Og Mandino

Love is not measured by how many times you touch each other but by how many times you reach each other.
- Cathy Morancy

Love is like quick-silver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.
- Dorothy Parker

"Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."

- Bette Davis

"Children seldom misquote you.
In fact, they usually repeat word for word
what you shouldn't have said."

- Unknown

Early to bed and early to rise -- till you make enough money to do
otherwise.

On glasses:

Words, like eyeglasses, blur everything that they do not make more clear.
- Joseph Joubert

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
- Fred Allen

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.
- Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.
- Dorothy Parker, 1893 - 1967

On community:

A community is like a ship, everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
- Henrik Ibsen

Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.
- Edgar Watson Howe

Water, everywhere over the earth, flows to join together. A single natural law controls it. Each human is a member of a community and should work within it.
- The I Ching

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
- William James, 1842 - 1910

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
- Beverly Sills

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up.
- Charles Langbridge Morgan

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
- Samuel Johnson

We tend not to choose the unknown, which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.
- Robert Orben

On the head

Sometimes the child in one behaves a certain way and the rest of oneself follows behind, slowly shaking its head.
- James E. Shapiro

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him, for an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
- Joseph E. O'Donnell

In life you are given two ends, one to think with and the other to sit on. Your success in life depends on which end you use most. Heads you win, tails you lose.
- Conrad Burns, US Senator, Montana

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
- Jonathan Swift

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.
- Caryn Leschen

On fate:

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
- Albert Camus

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
- G.K. Chesterton

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate, that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Actions are the seed of Fate. Deeds grow into Destiny.
- A. L. Linall, Jr

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own mind.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945

On family:

Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl - no superior alternative has yet been found.
- Winston Churchill

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them.
- Desmond Tutu

To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.
- Pope John Paul II

In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
- Tao Te Ching

The presidency is temporary - but the family is permanent.
- Yvonne De Gaulle

**

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose
begins."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes
**

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

Man always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

Totally mad. Utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.
- Today's quotes are all from Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 - 2001

**

On books:

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been, it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the choicest possessions of men.
- Thomas Carlyle

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it.
- Edward P. Morgan

What is the most precious, the most exciting smell awaiting you in the house when you return to it after a dozen years or so? The smell of roses, you think? No, mouldering books.
- Andre Sinyavsky

A book is a garden carried in the pocket.
- Chinese proverb

When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before.
- Cliff Fadiman

And more on books:

These days it seems like any idiot with a laptop computer can churn out a business book and make a few bucks. That's certainly what I'm hoping. If would be a real letdown if the trend changed before this masterpiece goes to print.
- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally. I like to be able to lean my head against them.
- Leigh Hunt

The covers of this book are too far apart.
- Ambrose Bierce

Imagine a survivor of a failed civilization with only a tattered book on aromatherapy for guidance in arresting a cholera epidemic. Yet, such a book would more likely be found amid the debris than a comprehensible medical text.
- James Lovelock

Many a man wishes he were strong enough to tear a telephone book in half - especially if he has a teenage daughter.
- Guy Albert Lombardo

On mothers

Marriage and the up-bringing of children in the home require as well-trained a mind and as well-disciplined a character as any other occupation that might be considered a career.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

A mother's love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.
- Agatha Christie

A mother's arms are made of tenderness and children sleep soundly in them.
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
- Florida Scott-Maxwell

From Henry Ward Beecher. "Do not keep the
alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are
dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while
their ears can hear them and while their hearts can be thrilled by them."

Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote " In the sheltered simplicity of the first
days after a baby is born, one sees the magical closed circle, the
miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other."

From Winston Churchill:

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all

If you're going through hell, keep going.
- All today's quotes are from Sir Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965

Some thoughts on the use and importance of truth:

In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
- Boris Pasternak

An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offense; a vain man, in order that it may.
- William Hazlitt

The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
- William Sloan Coffin

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.
- Martin Luther

Honesty is the best part of any art form. If you don't have that, you're kidding yourself and your listener.
- Billie Joel

On division:

All humanity is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who are movable, and those who move!
- Benjamin Franklin

The world is divided into people who do things, and people who get credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class, there is far less competition.
- Dwight Morrow

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
- Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519

When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with.
- Joseph Campbell, 1904 - 1987

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision,' you
immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. -- Mary
McCarthy

Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has
to be us.
Jerry Garcia

On loneliness:

Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone, and the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.
- Paul Johannes Tillich

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected.
- Chief Sealth

Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
- Dag Hammarskjold, 1905 - 1961

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
- Erma Bombeck

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.
- Jules Renard, 1864 - 1910

Sometimes you have to make music with what you got. -- Izhak Perlman

Too often the opportunity knocks, but by the time you push back the chain,
push back the bolt, unhook the locks and shut off the burglar alarm, it's too
late -- Rita Coolidge

Benjamin McLane Spock was born on this day in 1902. After a strict and somewhat bizarre childhood he studied medicine, and in 1946 wrote The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care which became, for better or worse, the operating manual for a whole generation of children. (Including yours truly.) Here are few quotes from Dr Spock.

All the time a person is a child he is both a child and learning to be a parent. After he becomes a parent he becomes predominantly a parent reliving childhood.

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse.

There are only two things a child will share willingly - communicable diseases and his mother's age.

The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.
- Today's quotes are all from Benjamin McLane Spock, 1903 - 1998

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a
Democrat!"
--Will Rogers

On taxes:

The tax system is stacked against the average taxpayer.
-Senator Edward M. Kennedy

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther.
-Wernher von Braun

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
-Gore Vidal

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to get the most feathers with the least hissing.
-Jean Baptiste Colbert, Controller General of Finances for Louis XIV

Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling tax increases revenue enhancement. Not so. No one was fooled.
-James Danforth Quayle

We tend not to choose the unknown, which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.
- Alice Walker

The first step is always to succeed in becoming surprised - to notice that there is something funny going on.
- David Gelernter, The Muse in the Machine

The only certain thing about the future is that it will surprise even those who have seen furthest into it.
- Eric Hobsbawm

I doubt whether the world holds for anyone a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream.
- Heywood C. Broun

On censorship:

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home, but unlike charity, it should end there.
-Clare Boothe Luce

Literature should not be surpressed merely because it affects the moral code of the censor.
-William O. Douglas

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.
-Archibald MacLeish

As it is an ancient truth that freedom cannot be legislated into existence, so it is no less obvious that freedom cannot be censored into existence.
-Dwight David Eisenhower

They can't censor the gleam in my eye.
-Charles Laughton

On bosses:

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The supreme irony of business management is that it is far easier for an inadequate CEO to keep his job than it is for an inadequate subordinate.... At too many companies, the boss shoots the arrow of managerial performance and then hastily paints the bullseye around the spot where it lands.
- Warren Buffett

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
- Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963

When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
- Daniel B. Luten

Accomplishing the impossible means only the boss will add it to your regular duties.
- Doug Larson

On competition:

While it's important to win, it's imperative to compete.
-Dave Weinbaum

You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things; to compete. You can be just an ordinary person, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus.
-Sir Edmond Hillary

Competitions are for horse, not artist.
-Bela Bartok

When I go our on the ice, I just think about my skating. I forget it is a competition.
-Katarina Witt

Competition can damage self-esteem, create anxiety, and lead to cheating and hurt feelings. But so can romantic love.
-Mariah Burton Nelson

" ...Methinks it is a token of healthy and
gentle characteristics, when women of
high thoughts and accomplishments love
to sew, especially as they are never more
at home with their own hearts than while
so occupied." ----- Hawthorne's "Marble
Faun".

On decision making:

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectively and happily than seriousness.
-Horace

Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision is a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.
-Gordon Graham

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be....
-Isaac Asimov

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
-Henri-Frédéric Amiel

We make our decisions, and then our decisions turn around and make us.
-R. W. Boreham

On rest:

I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.
- Alexandre Dumas, père

Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt. He, therefore, that spends his whole time in recreation is every whetting, never mowing; his grass may grow and his steed starve. As, contrarily, he that always toils and never recreates, is ever mowing, never whetting; laboring too much to little purpose; as good no scythe as no edge.
- Bishop Joseph Hall

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
- Sir John Lubbock

You find that you have peace of mind and can enjoy yourself, get more sleep, and rest when you know that it was a one hundred percent effort that you gave - win or lose.
- Gordie Howe

Make sure you never, never argue at night. You just lose a good night's sleep, and you can't settle anything until morning anyway.
- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
-Douglas MacArthur

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
-Douglas MacArthur

I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up wrinkles the soul.
-Douglas MacArthur

On courage:

Whatever you do, you need courage.
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to
tell you you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising
which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To
map out a course of action and follow it to the end, requires
some of the same courage which a soldier needs.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do not believe that an individual may gain spiritually
while those around him suffer...
I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter,
of all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man
gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him and if one
man falls, the whole world falls to that extent."

- Gandhi

On generosity:

To practice five things under all circumstances constitutes perfect virtue; these five are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness.
-Confucius

To the generous mind the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it.
-Benjamin Franklin

Real generosity is doing something nice for someone who will never find it out.
-Frank A. Clark

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
-Khalil Gibran, 1883 - 1931

The American people are very generous people and will forgive almost any weakness, with the possible exception of stupidity.
-Will Rogers

From Shakespeare:

All the world's a stage, and the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.

He is well paid that is well satisfied.
-From The Merchant of Venice

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
For now hath time made me his numbering clock;
My thoughts are minutes.
-From Richard II

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.
-All today's quotes are from William Shakespeare

Home:

A person travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
-George Moore

Home is the wallpaper above the bed, the family dinner table, the church bells in the morning, the bruised shins of the playground, the small fears that come with dusk, the streets and squares and monuments and shops that constitute one's first universe.
-Henry Anatole Grunwald

Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr

A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
-Sarah Margaret Fuller

Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home.
-Bill Cosby

Naturalist and artist John James Audubon was born on this day in 1780. April 26.

For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.
-David H. Lawrence

I value my garden more for being full [of] blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
-Joseph Addison

The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
-Henry David Thoreau

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
-Henry Van Dyke

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

On love:

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
- Anais Nin, 1903 - 1977

Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck - if you survive you start looking very carefully to the right and left.
- Jean Kerr

The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core strength within you that survives all hurt.
- Max Lerner, 1902 - 1992

High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.
- Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
- John Barrymore

Self-respect -- the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious. --
H.L. Mencken

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. --
Winston Churchill

On freedom:

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
- George Washington

Increase of freedom in the State may sometimes promote mediocrity, and give vitality to prejudice; it may even retard useful legislation, diminish the capacity for war, and restrict the boundaries of Empire. ... A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor and weak, and of no account, but free; rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
- Lord John Emerich Edward

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
- Albert Einstein

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.
- Frederick Douglass

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country.
- Benjamin Franklin

**

I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use
language that makes him the dominant
species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that
separates us from animals. We
aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners. -- Jeff Stilson