Wikiquote:Quote of the day/August 2010


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August 1
  It is — or seems to be — a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it.

~ Herman Melville ~


 


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August 2
  One writes out of one thing only — one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.

~ James Baldwin ~

 


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August 3

  Perhaps there was no limit, there might, quite likely, be no such condition as the ultimate; there might be no time when any creature or any group of creatures could stop at any certain point and say, this is as far as we can go, there is no use of trying to go farther. For each new development produced, as side effects, so many other possibilities, so many other roads to travel, that with each step one took down any given road there were more paths to follow. There'd never be an end, he thought — no end to anything.

~ Clifford D. Simak ~

 


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August 4
  Contrary to the rumours that you've heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-El, to save the planet Earth.

~ Barack Obama ~

 


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August 5
  Tis true, my form is something odd
but blaming me, is blaming God.
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.

~ Joseph Merrick ~

 


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August 6


 

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:
That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law.

~ Alfred Tennyson ~

 


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August 7
  The real struggle is not between the right and the left but between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks.

~ Jimmy Wales ~

 


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August 8
  No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

~ Shirley Jackson ~

 


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August 9
  If you are not ready, and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knock you down, hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall. It is such a big explosion, it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over town, but if you duck and cover, like Bert, you will be much safer.

~ Duck and Cover ~

 


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August 10
  The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.

~ Andrew Sullivan ~

 


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August 11
  Wait until the world is free before you write a creed.
In this creed there will be but one word — Liberty.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll ~

 


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August 12
  No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.

~ George Soros ~

 


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August 13
  Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.

~ Alfred Hitchcock ~

 


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August 14
  One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.

~ Walter Scott ~

 


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August 15
  If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds. I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

~ Napoleon I of France ~

 


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August 16
  Some men, like a tiled house, are long before they take fire, but once on flame there is no coming near to quench them.

~ Thomas Fuller ~

 


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August 17
  Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice — a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

~ Davy Crockett ~

 


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August 18
  I saw the starry Tree
Eternity
Put forth the blossom Time.

~ Robert Williams Buchanan ~

 


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August 19
  Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.

~ Bernard Baruch ~

 


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August 20
  The grand design of nature perceived broadly in four dimensions, including the forces that move the universe and created man, with special focus on evolution in our own biosphere, is something intrinsically good that it is right to preserve and enhance, and wrong to destroy and degrade.

~ Roger Wolcott Sperry ~

 


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August 21
 

The night was long and dark and just
Another dagger to my trust.
I thrust it in until I bleed
I wiped my point for you to see.

And anyway,
It's over now.
Nothing left to say.
I don't know why,
I don't care how,
It's over anyway.

~ Alicia Witt ~

 


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August 22
 

A gram of experience is worth a ton of theory.

~ Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury ~

 


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August 23
  I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle —
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

~ Edgar Lee Masters ~

 


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August 24
  Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.

~ Jorge Luis Borges ~

 


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August 25
  Calmly take what ill betideth;
Patience wins the crown at length
Rich repayment him abideth
Who endures in quiet strength.
Brave the tamer of the lion;
Brave whom conquered kingdoms praise;
Bravest he who rules his passions,
Who his own impatience sways.

~ Johann Gottfried Herder ~

 


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August 26
  Happiness comes out of contentment, and contentment always comes out of service.

~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi ~

 


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August 27
  Ambiguity of language is philosophy's main source of problems. That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.

~ Giuseppe Peano ~

 


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August 28
File:RobertsonDavies.jpg   The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.

~ Robertson Davies ~

 


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August 29
  Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. ~

 


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August 30
  If you're in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

~ Warren Buffett ~

 


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August 31
  The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.

~ Eldridge Cleaver ~

 


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Today is Thursday, March 28, 2024; it is now 18:36 (UTC)