Quotes about day
page 58

“Ought a man to be confident that he deserves his good fortune, and think much of himself when he has overcome a nation, or city, or empire; or does fortune give this as an example to the victor also of the uncertainty of human affairs, which never continue in one stay? For what time can there be for us mortals to feel confident, when our victories over others especially compel us to dread fortune, and while we are exulting, the reflection that the fatal day comes now to one, now to another, in regular succession, dashes our joy.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Aemilius, sec. 27
Parallel Lives

Feeling, Confidence, Thinking, Time

“The time is not far distant when I shall be able to say that one doctor, with, perhaps, ten assistants, can probably effect several hundred if not one thousand sterilizations in a single day.”

Carl Clauberg (1898–1957) German general

Letter to Himmler, June 1943. Quoted in "The Second World War: A Complete History" - Page 436 - by Sir Martin Gilbert - History - 2004

Distant, Time

“Before I came into the department, your Excellency was obliged often to stand Quarter-master. However capable the principal was of doing his duty, he was hardly ever with you. The line and the staff were at war with each other. The country had been plundered in a way that would now breed a kind of civil war between the staff and the inhabitants. The manner of my engaging in this business, and your Excellency's declaration to the Committee of Congress, that you would stand Quarter-master no longer, are circumstances which I wish may not be forgotten; as I may have occasion, at some future day, to appeal to your Excellency for my own justification. One thing I can say, with truth and sincerity, that I have conducted the business with as much prudence and economy, as if my private fortune had been answerable for the disbursements. And I believe your Excellency will do me the justice to say, the department has cooperated with your measures as far as circumstances were to be governed by me; and this you had reason to apprehend would not have been the case had I not taken direction of the business. And here, in justice to my colleagues, I shall mention that I think them entitled to your Excellency's personal esteem, from the warmth of their wishes, and a desire to promote your ease and convenience.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (24 April 1779)

War, Truth, Justice, Way

“One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.”

O. Henry book The Four Million

"The Gift of the Magi" - Full text online http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html The Four Million (1906)

Christmas

“The very early days of Pink Floyd were magical. We played small auditoriums for entranced audiences, and there was a wonderful sense of communion. We got overpowered by the weight of success and numbers — not just the money but the size of the audience. I became very disenchanted. I had to make the choice of staying on the treadmill or making the braver decision to travel a more difficult path alone.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

USA Today, 1999
Philosophy

Money, Travel, Decision, Sense

“"If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more." — Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

Life, Men, Way, Question

“The talkies are the only art that would attract Leonardo da Vinci were he alive to-day. This art is a baby giant, as clumsy as all babies are…we don't know what the baby will be doing and saying when it grows up. But we are sure it will make its mark in the world.”

William Moulton Marston (1893–1947) American psychologist, lawyer, inventor and comic book writer

Martson, Pitkin, The Art of Sound Pictures (1929), p. vi; Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014), p. 140.

World, Art, Baby

“Lay your sleeping head, my love
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral;
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie:
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Lay your sleeping head, my love (1937), lines 1–2, written January 1937; also known as Lullaby.

Love, Children, Lie, Beauty

“Exactly twenty-five years from 1 May 1950- the day President Truman authorized the first U. S. military assistance to Indochina- Saigon and the South Vietnamese government fell to the communist regime of North Vietnam, on 30 April 1975. Thus ended the longest conflict in American history. After every prolonged conflict in its experience, the United States has plunged into a period of assessment, trying to sift out the meaning of the memorable events of the recent past while searching for the key to a conflict-free future. This happened in the 1870s after our Civil War, in the 1920s after World War I, and for a relatively brief period in the late 1940s after World War II. But with the advent of the Cold War in 1947, followed by the Korean War in 1950- our first experience with limited war- we lived through over a quarter of a century during which the United States was continuously involved in some sort of emergency, contingency, or actual hostilities somewhere in the world. And so, after our agonizing experience in Vietnam, the first clear failure in our history, it is not surprising to find the United States of the 1970s and 1980s brooding over its frustrations and reevaluating its role in the world.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. vii

Hostility, War, World, History

“Kautilya has elaborated in his Arthashastra the psychological principles which alienate some people from their own society, and lead them straight into the lap of those who are out to subvert that society. The first group of people who can be alienated are the maneevarga, that is, those who are conceited and complain that they have been denied what is their due on account of birth, brains or qualities of character. (…) the Church was instinctively employing the psychological principles propounded by Kautilya. …Christian missionaries could find quite a few and easy converts amongst these upper classes precisely because the Church had declared war on their society. … By the time the French, the British and the Dutch appeared on the Eastern scene, Christianity had been found out in the West for what it had always been in facto power-hungary politics masquerading as religion. The later-day European imperialists, therefore, had only a marginal use for the christian missionary. He could be used to beguile the natives. But he could not be allowed to dictate the parallel politics of imperialism. … The field for the Christian politics of conversion has become considerably smaller in Asia due to the resurgence of Islam, and the triumph of Communism… It is only in India, Ceylon and Japan that the missionary continues to practice his profession effectively.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Genesis and History of the Politics of Conversion, in Christianity, and Imperialist ideology. 1983.

War, People, Religion, Communication

“To have a crowd like this on our final day, can you believe it, this is the day. This is the day we take our country back. Remember that. This is the day we take our country back. So I got a little notice in case you see it. It's security guys. We have wonderful security guys. They said, "Mr. Trump, there may be somebody with tomatoes in the audience." So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously… Okay? Just knock the hell… I promise you I will pay for the legal fees, I promise. I promise. There won't be so much cause the courts agree with us too. What's going on in this country.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/trump-knock-the-crap-out-of-tomato-throwers/2016/02/01/1d1fe1e2-c92b-11e5-b9ab-26591104bb19_video.html (1 February 2016) 2010s, 2016, February

Guy, Hell, Country

“I meet men all the time who can bench 400 pounds but can't climb up through a window to pull someone from a burning building. I know guys who can run marathons but can't sprint to anyone's rescue unless they put their shoes on first. Lots of swimmers do laps every day but can't dive deep enough to save a friend, or know how to carry him over rocks and out of the surf.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

A Wild Workout for the Real World, Men'sHealth http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/fitness-to-survive-in-the-wild_r=0

Men, Shoe, Guy, Time

“It is my ambition that parents can send their children to school with the prospects that they are as interested and excited to learn on their last day of school as they were on the very first.”

Lars Løkke Rasmussen (1964) Danish politician

From his New Year Address http://www.stm.dk/_p_13032.html (1 January 2010). 2010s, 2010

Children, School, Parent, Learning

“I appreciate very much your generous invitation to be here tonight. You bear heavy responsibilities these days and an article I read some time ago reminded me of how particularly heavily the burdens of present day events bear upon your profession. You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx.
We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and managing editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per installment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labeled as the "lousiest petty bourgeois cheating."
But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war.
If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different. And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper man.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address to ANPA

War, World, Family, Hope

“The problems of hunger and food, unemployment, a growing and crushing price rise in the commodities needed for one’s day-to-day subsistence have naturally found angry expressions, sometimes violent expression in many parts of the country. Corruption and falling standard in administration and public life have added to their dimension.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, P.83

Life, Hunger, Food, Nature

“And there the lion's ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying: "Wrath by his meekness,
And by his health, sickness,
Is driven away
From our immortal day."”

William Blake Night

Night, st. 5
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Health, Tear

“Love is so simple, to quote a phrase; you've known it all the time, I'm learnin' it these days.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), You're a Big Girl Now

Love, Quotes, Time

“Ther days may come,/Ther days may go,/But still the light of Mem'ry weaves/Those gentle dreams/Of long ago”

T. H. White book The Queen of Air and Darkness

The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939)

Dreams, Light

“If you ask me abruptly
Why write poetry
Why not do
Something useful
Then I won't know
How to answer you
I am like a goldsmith hammering day and night
Just so I can extend pain
Into a gold ornament as thin as a cicada's wing
I don't know if working so hard
To transform sorrows into
Shimmering words and phrases
Is also
Beautifully worthwhile.”

Xi Murong (1943) Taiwanese poet and painter

"Poetry's Value", in Where Books Fall Open: A Reader's Anthology of Wit & Passion (David R. Godine Publisher, 2003), p. 56

Pain, Night

“He said that in his whole life he most repented of three things: one was that he had trusted a secret to a woman; another, that he went by water when he might have gone by land; the third, that he had remained one whole day without doing any business of moment.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Secret, Business, Water

“As ships becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail, at dawn of day
Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Qua Cursum Ventus. Compare: "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Pt. III, The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth, sec. IV.

“At night I wake up and think, What color will make me feel better when I soak in the bathtub for an hour? I want everyone who's dreaming of a glamorous life to know that I'd trade a good bath any day for the heels, the hair, the makeup, the tight dresses, the photographs, the small talk.”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

O interview (2003)

Life, Dreams, Color, Feeling

“If God in his wisdom have brought close
The day when I must die,
That day by water or fire or air
My feet shall fall in the destined snare
Wherever my road may lie.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The King's Tragedy, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Wisdom, God, Lie, Water

“Auspicious Prince! at whose nativity
Some royal planet rul'd the southern sky;
Thy longing country's darling and desire;
Their cloudy pillar, and their guardian fire:
Their second Moses, whose extended wand
Divides the seas, and shows the promis'd land:
Whose dawning day, in very distant age,
Has exercis'd the sacred prophet's rage:
The people's pray'r, the glad diviner's theme,
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!”

John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel

Pt. I, lines 230–239.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Men, People, Age, Dreams

“We have neither killed anyone nor have we committed any crime for so many of our children to keep being murdered here each day as a punishment. There is a boy, Ateeq, who lived in this sector, who was martyred just this morning; and all praise is due to Allah, his grave gave off a fragrance. All of us could smell it, and it was exactly the scent which came from my father's grave. We believe that if even a few people stand up to a large army, they can confront it if they are on the Truth; and we are on the Truth -- that is why we have been able to fight them for so long.”

Abdul Rashid Ghazi (1964–2007) Pakistani fundamentalist

Children, People, Truth, Boy

“The American Dream can come in many different ways for many different people. It doesn't have to come in the way they explain it to you. Now, the American Dream can come if a guy hits the lottery. Who in the world thought he would hit a lottery? That's the American Dream for him. But I look at it from day one, moving up the ladder, and moving up the ladder. Now you get to the top of the ladder and you have to look back. How did you get to that ladder? To me, that's the American Dream.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

People, World, Dreams, Way

“Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.
It’s night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore’s Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2 x 1027 kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 1023 MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 1023 MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPS being added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time. About ten years after that, the solar system’s installed processing power will nudge the critical 1 MIPS per gram threshold—one million instructions per second per gram of matter. After that, singularity—a vanishing point beyond which extrapolating progress becomes meaningless. The time remaining before the intelligence spike is down to single-digit years …”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), pp. 38-39

Women, World, Law, Intelligence

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Love, Men, Hostility, People

“Paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of a great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God

Problem, Effort, Affliction, Help

“Marijuana is like sex. If I don't do it every day, I get a headache. I think marijuana should be recognized for what it is, as a medicine, an herb that grows in the ground. If you need it, use it.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

[Nelson, Willie; Bud Shrake; Edwin Shrake, 2000, Willie: An Autobiography, Cooper Square Press, 197]

Sex, Thinking, Marijuana

“Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one’s stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

As quoted in The New York Times (1 January 1978)

Life, Effort, Time

“I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

undated quotes, M.C. Escher Foundation

“Dmitry confessed once that he learned English hoping to play in England one day.”

Dmitri Bulykin (1979) Russian association football player

(Yuri Zavarzin, former owner of FC Dynamo)<ref> Мартин ГАШЕК ПОЧЕМУ БЫ БРАТУ-ДОМИНАТОРУ ТАКЖЕ НЕ ПОИГРАТЬ В "ДИНАМО"?! http://footbik.narod.ru/RF2004/obz_kom/obzorDYNAMO2.htm

Hope, Learning

“Studied in the dry light of conservative Christian anarchy, Russia became luminous like the salt of radium; but with a negative luminosity as though she were a substance whose energies had been sucked out — an inert residuum — with movement of pure inertia. From the car window one seemed to float past undulations of nomad life — herders deserted by their leaders and herds — wandering waves stopped in their wanderings — waiting for their winds or warriors to return and lead them westward; tribes that had camped, like Khirgis, for the season, and had lost the means of motion without acquiring the habit of permanence. They waited and suffered. As they stood they were out of place, and could never have been normal. Their country acted as a sink of energy like the Caspian Sea, and its surface kept the uniformity of ice and snow. One Russian peasant kissing an ikon on a saint's day, in the Kremlin, served for a hundred million. The student had no need to study Wallace, or re-read Tolstoy or Tourguenieff or Dostoiewski to refresh his memory of the most poignant analysis of human inertia ever put in words; Gorky was more than enough: Kropotkine answered every purpose.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life, Cars, Kiss, Study

“A life by choice is one that is filled with love, happiness, and an appreciation of each day.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 78

Love, Life, Happiness

“The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Beauty, Night

“Searching for a cure for aging is not just a nice thing that we should perhaps one day get around to. It is an urgent, screaming moral imperative. The sooner we start a focused research program, the sooner we will get results. It matters if we get the cure in 25 years rather than in 24 years: a population greater than that of Canada would die as a result. In this matter, time equals life, at a rate of approximately 70 lives per minute. With the meter ticking at such a furious rate, we should stop faffing about.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html (2005)

Life, Age, Search, Time

“I had a woman the other day who came up and complained to me that she has to pay $200 a month for her prescriptions… I said, in other words, this $200 a month keeps you alive, she goes yes. I said, and you're complaining that you're paying $200 a month and it keeps you alive? What's your cable bill? I mean, what's your cell phone bill? Because she had a cell phone. And how can you say that you complain that you have $200 to keep you alive and that's a problem? No, that's a blessing!”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Santorum's Message To People Who Can't Afford Health Care Costs: Lower Your Cell Phone Bill
Think Progress
Igor
Volsky
2011-08-08
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/08/08/290934/santorums-message-to-people-who-cant-afford-health-care-costs-lower-your-cell-phone-bill/
2011-08-11

Problem

“I used to be one of the guys, you know. I used to be another faceless contributor in a wall of opinion. I miss those days.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

1 August 2008
Fully Ramblomatic

Guy

“Part of the problem with service in this country is we don't honor it like we once did. There's nothing wrong or evil about having a bad day. There's everything wrong with making others have to have it... with you.”

Neil Cavuto (1958) American television presenter

"Why do we tolerate awful people?" http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/neilcavuto/2004/05/29/11852.html, townhall.com, (May 29, 2004).

Problem, Evil, Parting, Country

“To complain about how the media are dominated by liberals, Limbaugh has an hour a day on network television, an hour on cable, and a radio show syndicated by over 600 stations.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, The "Liberal Media" Myth, p. 98
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“Winds of change have blown in order to lift the injustice to which the world is subjected by America and its supporters and the Jews who are collaborating with them. Look at what is happening these days in Indonesia, where Suharto, a despot who ruled for 30 years, was overthrown. The time will come, sooner rather than later, when criminal despots who betrayed God and his Prophet, and betrayed their trust and their nation, will face the same fate.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

In response to the interviewer stating: 'Is your Islamic message having an impact?'
1990s, Time magazine interview (1998)

God, Fate, World, Support

“Propensities for crime are irrelevant in a discussion about the murder of an individual — Ms. Kathryn Steinle and all other victims of criminals who should not be in the U. S. For these deaths have nothing to do with aggregate crime rates; they're about individuals who should be alive: a baby that should have been born, a girl who should be among the living, young men and women who should not be dead. To justify the crime-probabilities line-of-inquiry in the context of killer Francisco Sanchez' presence that day on the San Francisco pier, you would need to show that had Sanchez been deported or jailed or turned back at the border—his victim, Ms. Steinle, would nevertheless have suffered the same fate at the hands of a native murderer. The same eventuality would need to be demonstrated with respect to each individual victim of a criminal alien. The implication is crushingly stupid.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Hispandering Effect," http://www.quarterly-review.org/the-hispandering-effect/ The Quarterly Review, July 12, 2015. 2010s, 2015

Death, Women, Men, Fate

“Now, when our Lord was come to eighteen years,
The King commanded that there should be built
Three stately houses, one of hewn square beams
With cedar lining, warm for winter days;
One of veined marbles, cool for summer heat;
And one of burned bricks, with blue tiles bedecked,
Pleasant at seed-time, when the champaks bud--
Subha, Suramma, Ramma, were their names.
Delicious gardens round about them bloomed,
Streams wandered wild and musky thickets stretched,
With many a bright pavilion and fair lawn
In midst of which Siddartha strayed at will,
Some new delight provided every hour;
And happy hours he knew, for life was rich,
With youthful blood at quickest; yet still came
The shadows of his meditation back,
As the lake's silver dulls with driving clouds.”

Edwin Arnold book The Light of Asia

Book The Second.
The Light of Asia (1879)

Life, Happiness, Youth, Winter

“When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext96/lkbak10.txt (1888), Ch. 9.

Love, Money, Motivation, Effort

“I think it is a great day for freedom. I watched the scenes on television last night and again this morning because I felt one ought not only hear about them but see them because you see the joy on people's faces and you see what freedom means to them; it makes you realise that you cannot stifle or suppress people's desire for liberty and so I watched with the same joy as everyone else and I hope that they will be a prelude to the Berlin Wall coming down.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Remarks on the Berlin Wall (10 November 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107819 Third term as Prime Minister

People, Hope, Thinking, Freedom

“Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)

Love, God, War, Rage

“Give me three days and three nights of hard fighting, and you will be relieved.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

Statement made by Taylor to the men of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, as he circulated among the men on June 4, 1944, two days before commencement of the amphibious invasion of France, Operation Overlord. Easy Company and the entire 101st Airborne Division fought for 7 days, more than twice the promised number, before its last major fight in Normandy at the Battle of Bloody Gulch on June 13. Two days later on June 15, 9 days after the start of Mission Albany, the 101st Airborne's specific part of Overlord, was considered over. As quoted in Band of Brothers (1992) by Stephen E. Ambrose, p. 65

Fight, Night

“i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

65
XAIPE (1950)

Love, Life, Birthday, Birth

“Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
Asimov: Those that have proved permanent—the ones that affected every facet of life and made certain that mankind could never go back again—were always brought about by science and technology. In fact, the same twin "movers" were even behind the other "solely" historical changes. Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church—like John Huss—fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
Plowboy: Today the world is changing faster than it has at any other time in history. Do you then feel that science—and scientists—are especially important now?
Asimov: I do think so, and as a result it's my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so. After all, we don't want scientists to become a priesthood. We don't want society's technological thinkers to know something that nobody else knows—to "bring down the law from Mt. Sinai"—because such a situation would lead to public fear of science and scientists. And fear, as you know, can be dangerous.
Plowboy: But scientific knowledge is becoming so incredibly vast and specialized these days that it's difficult for any individual to keep up with it all.
Asimov: Well, I don't expect everybody to be a scientist or to understand every new development. After all, there are very few Americans who know enough about football to be a referee or to call the plays … but many, many people understand the sport well enough to follow the game. It's not important that the average citizen understand science so completely that he or she could actually become involved in research, but it is very important that people be able to "follow the game" well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy.
Every subject of worldwide importance—each question upon which the life and death of humanity depends—involves science, and people are not going to be able to exercise their democratic right to direct government policy in such areas if they don't understand what the decisions are all about.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, Death, People, World

“"Personal density," Kurt Mondaugen in his Peenemünde office not too many steps away from here, enunciating the Law which will one day bear his name, "is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth."
"Temporal bandwidth," is the width of your present, your now. It is the familiar "∆ t" considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

Law, Sense, Past, Future

“The planted seed consigned to common earth,
Disdains to moulder with the baser clay;
But rises up to meet the light of day,
Spreads all its leaves, and flowers, and tendrils forth;
And, bathed and ripened in the genial ray,
Pours out its perfume on the wandering gales,
Till in that fragrant breath its life exhales.”

Anne Lynch Botta (1815–1891) writer, poet, socialite

Aspiration

Life, Flowers, Light

“Today we decide about metaphysics and about even more elevated things at philosophy conferences. For everything that is to be done these days we must first have a meeting, and here is how it works: people come together, constantly come together, and they all wait for one another to turn up so that the others will tell them how it is, and if it doesn’t get said, never mind, everyone has had their say. It may very well be that all the talkers who are having their say have understood little of the matter in question, but still we believe that if we accumulate all that misunderstanding something like understanding will leap forth at the end of the day. Thus there are people today who travel from one meeting to the next and who are sustained by the confidence that something is really happening, that they’ve actually done something; whereas, at bottom, they’ve merely ducked out of work, seeking in chatter a place to build a nest for their helplessness—a helplessness, it is true, that they will never understand.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Gesamtausgabe, 20:376, as translated by David Farrell Krell in Portraits of American Continental Philosophers (1999), p. 101

People, Travel, Confidence, Understanding

“Some days are diamonds.
Some days are rocks.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Walls (Circus)
Lyrics, Songs and Music from "She's the One" (1996)

“A fresh river in a beautiful meadow
Imagined in his mind
The good Painter, who would some day paint it”

Jeff VanderMeer book City of Saints and Madmen

"The Transformation of Martin Lake", epigram, p. 130
City of Saints and Madmen (2001–2004)

Beauty, Imagination, Painting

“We should never have a doubt about Taiwan's independent status. Taiwan has been an independent and sovereign country since 23 March 1996, the day of its first direct presidential election.”

Annette Lu (1944) Taiwanese politician

Lu warns on ‘silent annexation’ by China (2013)

Country

“I remember those days hanging out
At the village green
Engineer boots, leather jackets
And tight blue jeans
Drop a dime in the box play the
Song about New Orleans
Cold beer, hot lights
My sweet romantic teenage nights.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
Song lyrics, The Stranger (1977)

Beer, Light, Night, Box

“I wanted something ephemeral, that would pass like a falling star and, most importantly, that would be impossible for museums to reabsorb. I didn't want it to be 'museumised'. The work had to pass by, make people dream and talk, and that would be all, the next day nothing would be left, everything would go back to the garbage bins.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

Quote of Tinguely in a radio interview (1982), as cited in: 'Violand-Hobi', Heidi G. Jean Tinguely: Life and Work (NY: Prestel, 1995), p. 36 ; Talking about his Homage to New York; Cited in: John D. Powell. (2009, p. 31).
Quotes, 1980's

People, Dreams, Star

“Until the day when a wise black man can become our ambassador in Paris, we will forever be a pre-Brazil.”

Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980) Brazilian writer and playwright

Revista Caras-Edição 914,n°19

“Gnawing upon our resentment, we stretch out in an iron cage,
Watching the slow passage of days and months.
How we despise the insolent crowd outside,
Standing there foolishy, with tiny eyes bulging,
As they mock the stately spirit of the deep jungle.
Here by misfortune, shamefully caged,
We are no more than a novel sight to amuse them, some plaything…
O stately soul, heroic land,
Vast domain where yesteryear we freely roamed,
We see you no more.
But do you know that during our days of frustration
We follow a great dream, letting our souls race to be near you,
O formidable jungle of ours!”

Thế Lữ (1907–1989)

"Remembering the Jungle: The Words of the Tiger in the Zoo", in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, pp. 159–160

Dreams, Soul

“But I have confidence that one day… there's a normal rendezvous with History that Quebec will hold, and I have confidence that we shall be there, together, to witness it.”

René Lévesque (1922–1987) Quebec politician

http://archives.radio-canada.ca/politique/provincial_territorial/clips/4212/
http://archives.cbc.ca/politics/provincial_territorial_politics/clips/776/
Mais j'ai confiance qu'un jour... y'a un rendez-vous normal avec l'Histoire que le Québec tiendra, et j'ai confiance qu'on sera là, ensemble, pour y assister.
Concession speech, 1980 Quebec referendum.

Confidence, History

“It is surreal to talk about issues, here on air, and then word-for-word hear Trump say it two days later.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

The Alex Jones Show, 11 August 2016 https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/11/alex-jones-it-surreal-talk-about-issues-here-air-and-then-word-word-hear-trump-say-it-two-days-later/212339. 2016

“Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Canada, 1924"; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 54.
1920s

“If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Scopes Trial, Dayton, Tennessee (13 July 1925)

Men, Books, Age, School

“In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Builders

The Builders (1849).

God, Art, Parting

“All of these politicians that I’m running against now, they’re trying to disassociate. I mean, you looked at Bush, it took him five days to answer the question on Iraq. He couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t know. I said, “Is he intelligent?” Then I looked at Rubio. He was unable to answer the question, is Iraq a good thing or bad thing? He didn’t know. He couldn’t answer the question. How are these people gonna lead us? How are we gonna — how are we gonna go back and make it great again? We can’t. They don’t have a clue. They can’t lead us. They can’t. They can’t even answer simple questions. It was terrible.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

People, Intelligence, Question

“Euclid's work will live long after all the text books of the present day are superseded and forgotten. It is one of the noblest monuments of antiquity; no mathematician worthy of the name can afford not to know Euclid, the real Euclid as distinct from any revised or rewritten versions which will serve for schoolboys or engineers. And, to know Euclid, it is necessary to know his language, and, so far as it can be traced, the history of the "elements" which he collected in his immortal work.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Books, History

“The woman I'm going to have to marry is going to have to be very, very good to top this day off for me.”

Mark McHugh (1990) Gaelic footballer

After Donegal won the 2012 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Final. RTÉ Sport http://www.rte.ie/sport/gaa/football/2012/0923/338781-mark-mchugh-savours-deserved-donegal-victory/

“Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope. In art it is not often possible to make direct use of your dreams of tomorrow and your excuses for yesterday.In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires — this is a benevolent form. The ideal self expressed in letters is not a crudely sugary affair except in dreary personalities; in any case the ideal is very much a part of the character, having its twenty-four hours a day to get through, and being no less unique in its combinations than one's fingerprints.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Anderson, Millay and Crane in Their Letters" (p. 133)
American Fictions (1999)

Dreams, Hope, Art, Communication

“We are working around the clock to ensure Baltimore City remains at peace, as it has throughout the day. The presence of the National Guard, Maryland State Police, and other law enforcement officials will continue in the days to come to ensure order is fully restored for the citizens of Baltimore.”

Larry Hogan (1956) American politician

" Governor Larry Hogan Mobilizes State Resources To Support Baltimore City Law Enforcement Response http://governor.maryland.gov/2015/04/28/governor-larry-hogan-mobilizes-state-resources-to-support-baltimore-city-law-enforcement-response/" (28 April 2015).

Peace, Law

“To-day unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Boston Hymn, st. 17
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

People

“There is no paradise, in the estimation of the believers in the Divine Unity, more exalted than to obey God’s commandments, and there is no fire in the eyes of those who have known God and His signs, fiercer than to transgress His laws and to oppress another soul, even to the extent of a mustard seed. On the Day of Resurrection God will, in truth, judge all men, and we all verily plead for His grace.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

V, 19
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Truth, Law

“Once upon a time…
When the cold wind that blows,
when the cold wind that blows in my heart,
it was a summer breeze and she would meet me in Chinatown,
for opium and tea
and she always brought me flowers
but I spared you those old ballads
All those songs I couldn’t play
But every giro day she’d dress me like a lady boy
And take me high out of the way
Don’t let the horse chase the new deal away, no
If we make love in the morning
I see your eyes look like two marbles in your head”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Lady Don't Fall Backwards"
Lyrics and poetry

Love, Making love, Way, Boy

“Memory, prophecy and fantasy
the past, the future and
the dreaming moment between
are all one country,
living one immortal day.

To know that is Wisdom.

To use it is the Art.”

Clive Barker book The Great and Secret Show

The Great and Secret Show

Wisdom, Dreams, Art, Memory

“About ten days later, it being the time of year when the National collected down and outs to walk on and understudy I arrived at the head office of the National Theatre in Aquinas Street in Waterloo.”

Tom Baker (1934) English actor

Time

“Amerika is just another Latin dictatorship. Those who have doubts should try the minimal experience of organizing a large rock festival in their state, sleeping on some beach in the summer or wearing a flag shirt. Ask the blacks what it's been like living under racism and you'll get a taste of the future we face. As the repression increases so will the underground - deadly groups of stoned revolutionaries sneaking around at night and balling all day.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Steal This Book (1971)

Sleep, Future, Summer, Night

“I won the contract for our company to install new ramps and equipment at Beefland. Building a "Stairway to Heaven" for the animals was more than just constructing a steel ramp-way into a concrete room. All of the workers, myself included, invested ourselves in he project. Sometimes tempers flared, but when the job was completed, we were better friends. As the "stairway" began to take shape, many thoughts crowded in on me. I became aware of how precious life was. I thought about death and I felt close to God. He had given us dominion over the animals so we could make use of them, but I realized now, more than ever, that the animals were His creation too, and, thus, they should be treated with respect. One day my blind roommate visited the plant. She reached over the side of the chute and touched the cattle. She wrote the following prayer after her visit: "The Stairway to Heaven" is dedicated to persons who desire to learn the meaning of life and not to fear death. You, through respect for these animals, can come to respect your fellow man as well. Touch, Listen and Remember."”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Pages 134-135 of Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin and Margaret M. Scariano

Life, Death, God, Fear

“Hawks are better soarers than buzzards but more often resort to flapping because they wish greater speed. A damp day is unfavorable for soaring unless there is a high wind. No bird soars in a calm.
The object of the tail is to increase the spread of surface in the rear when the wings are moved forward in light winds and thus preserve the centre of pressure at about the same spot. It seems to be used as a rudder very little. In high winds it is folded up very narrow.”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Wright's Notebook (1900)

Bird, Light, Speed

“The oldest and best known function for an ether is the conveyance of light, and hence the name "luminiferous" was applied to it, though at the present day many functions are known, and more will almost certainly be discovered.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

The Ether of Space https://books.google.com/books?id=ycgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1, p. 1 The Ether of Space (1909)

Light

“Oh, wow, what a scene that place was - that heavenly drug down sexual perversion get their rocks off health spa. I was already so bombed I don't know how I got there. I got down to the pool, where all the freaks were. I met Paul America at the pool and I told him we were probably in danger if we stayed, but we were so blasted we forgot what was good for us and what wasn't, and the whole place turned into a giant orgy... every kind of sex freak, from homosexuals to nymphomaniacs... oh, everybody eating each other on the raft, and drinking, guzzling tequila and vodka and Scotch and bourbon and shooting up every other second... losing syringes down the pool drains, the needles of the mainline scene, blocking the water infiltration system with broken syringes. Oh, it was really some night just going on an incredible sexual tailspin. Gobble, gobble, gobble. Couldn't get enough of it. It was one of the wildest scenes I've ever been in or ever hope to be in. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not, but I should be. Sex and speed, wow! Like, oh God. A twenty-four-hour climax that can go on for days. And there's no way to explain it unless you've been through it; there's no way to tell anyone who hasn't tasted it. I'd like to turn on the whole world for just a moment... just for a moment. I'm greedy; I'd like to keep most of it for myself and a few others, a few of my friends... to keep that superlative high, just on the cusp of each day... so that I'd radiate sunshine.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Ciao! Manhattan tapes, recalling its pool spa orgy scene
Edie : American Girl (1982)

God, Health, World, Hope

““When i say Abhinaya, oh, I can't do the abhinaya like what the great man did here yesterday”
- Great Bharatanatyam dancer Balasaraswati next day after Chakyar's lecture-demonstration at Madras Music Academy in 1973.”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya
Source: Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71), p. 17.

Music

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let's go home.”

Gordon H. Smith (1952) American politician

GOP Senator: Iraq War "May Be Criminal" http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002104.php (December 8, 2006)

War, Way, Home, Support

“Well, he wrote a book -- well, maybe here I'm being political -- he wrote a book about the tyrants of South America, and then he had several stanzas against the United States. Now he knows that that's rubbish. And he had not a word against Perón. Because he had a law suit in Buenos Aires, that was explained to me afterwards, and he didn't care to risk anything. And so, when he was supposed to be writing at the top of his voice, full of noble indignation, he had not a word to say against Perón. And he was married to an Argentine lady, he knew that many of his friends had been sent to jail. He knew all about the state of our country, but not a word against him. At the same time, he was speaking against the United States, knowing the whole thing was a lie, no? But, of course, that doesn't mean anything against his poetry. Neruda is a very fine poet, a great poet in fact. And when they gave Miguel de Asturias the Nobel Prize, I said that it should have been given to Neruda! Now when I was in Chile, and we were on different political sides, I think he did the best thing to do. He went on a holiday during the three or four days I was there so there was no occasion for our meeting. But I think he was acting politely, no? Because he knew that people would be playing him up against me, no? I mean, I was an Argentine, poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Page 96.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

People, Lie, Books, Law

“If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the kind of recovery we have now as well.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Truth, Falseness

“Every day, we are assassinating nearly 16,000 additional victims.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

Philipp von Boeselager, Daily Telegraph book review of Valkyrie: the Plot to Kill Hitler by Philipp von Boeselager http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/4527748/Valkyrie-the-Plot-to-Kill-Hitler-by-Philipp-von-Boeselager---review.html , February 5, 2008.

“Whether the 6-day creation story is a fable or the truth alluding to time dilation in Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Bible and the Quran – sharing the same root as an Abrahamic religion – are undoubtedly amongst the most profound and influential books ever written.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Truth, Books, Religion, Time

“Theresa May confirmed today that for years to come Britain will not have control of its borders. Instead we will have an unspecified transitional period after we leave, with no timeframe planned or announced. Yet again voters are being ignored by the political establishment. If Theresa May genuinely wanted to leave the EU then she would have used her speech today to announce that she is going to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act. We could be out of the EU within a single week. It is now over 200 days since the British people voted to leave the EU on June 23rd. The Tories seem to be doing everything they can to stall Brexit as long as they possibly can. We must be careful about Theresa May. When she was Home Secretary she gave several big speeches about controlling immigration. Then she opened the borders wider than the Labour Party. While some of the statements today sound good, her record for delivery is one of the worst for any politician in Westminster. We simply can’t trust her.”

Tim Aker (1985) British politician

Theresa May doesn’t want to control immigration http://www.timakermep.org/site/theresa-may-doesnt-want-to-control-immigration/ (January 17, 2017)

People, Home, Communication

“As subjects, 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 (1912–1989) American writer

"Characters in Fiction", p. 291
Sometimes misquoted as "We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story."
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

“"True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's Strange Story; "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria!”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter VII

Science, Time

“I remember one vivid winter’s day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme,. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. I looked around at the marble heroes, motionless in the lucid air, beneath the frozen rays of that winter sun which pours down on us 'without love', like perfect song.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 232
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Love, Soul, Question, Silence

“He saw in memory Mendoza’s face, her black eyes sad as she downloaded a chapter on revolutions.
Here you go. Great heroes and the things they wrecked. Always easier to destroy something than to create something. It’s harder to plant a garden than to blow up a building, and undoubtedly more boring, but you just might need to do it one day, eh?”

Kage Baker book The Sons of Heaven

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 32, Section 1 “Gray’s Inn Road” (p. 391)

Sadness, Memory

“There's a leveling homogeneity in America today created by television. Each day it passes over the vast land mass, over the states nudging each other like the sovereignties of the Balkans, creating a unifying cloud of aesthetic properties and experience. East and West, North and South are wrapped in a sort of over-soul of images, facts, happenings, celebrities. This debris is as sacred to our current fiction as gossip about the new vicar was to Trollope. And there it is on the page, informing the domestically restless households, father off somewhere, mother chagrined. Sons and daughters writing the books.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Locations: An Introduction" (pp. xix-xx)
American Fictions (1999)

Books, Soul, Daughters

“Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.”

William James Is Life Worth Living?

"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

“And I can't go on this way,
With it stronger every day,
But being too shy to say
That I really love you.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Too Shy To Say
Song lyrics, Fulfillingness' First Finale (1974)

Love, Way

“The narrative of thy battles eclipses the stories of Rustam and Isfandiyar. Thou didst bring an army in one night from Dhangan to Jalandhar… Thou didst direct but one assault and by that alone brought destruction upon the country. By the morning meal not one soldier, not one Brahman, remained unkilled or uncaptured. Their beads were severed by the carriers of swords. Their houses were levelled with the ground with flaming fire… Thou has secured victory to the country and to religion, for amongst the Hindus this achievement will be remembered till the day of resurrection.”

Ibrahim of Ghazna (1032–1099) sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire

Jalandhar (Punjab). Khwaja Mas'ud bin Sa'd bin Salman:Diwan-i-Salman in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. IV, pp. 518 ff.

Religion, Victory, Housing, Night

“Let the truth be told from young souls that become old
From days spent in the jungle, where must one go
To find it, time is real, we can't rewind it
Out of everybody I met, who told the truth?
Time did”

Common (rapper) (1972) American rapper, actor and author from Illinois

"The Truth", Pharoahe Monch Internal Affairs (1999)
Albums, Compilations, Singles, and Cameos

Truth, Soul, Time

“If I ask questions about religion that my grandparents didn’t ask, it is not because I am intellectually advanced. I wonder about the existence of God because, unlike my grandparents, I live much of my day in a secular city where I do not measure the hours with the tolling bells of a church.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

God, Religion, Question

“What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol' man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

Source: It's Not Easy Bein' Me: A Lifetime of No Respect But Plenty of Sex and Drugs (2004), p. 7

Birthday, Childhood

“That is just total nonsense and anybody who believes that is an idiot or a liar. The race issue was a fundamental problem. It was just a cancer on American society from day one.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Regarding claims that the American Civil War was not about slavery; "After Words with Bruce Bartlett" http://www.c-span.org/video/?204475-1/words-bruce-bartlett (7 April 2008), C-SPAN 2000s

Problem

“A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Men, World, Courage, Effort

Quotes about day page 58

Quotes about day
page 58