Wikiquote

August 26

day of the year
(Redirected from 26 August)

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. ~ Emma by Jane Austen
2004
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. ~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
2005
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn. ~ John Buchan (born 26 August 1875)
2006
We can pay our debts to the past by putting the future in debt to ourselves. ~ John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir
2007
Our sufferings have taught us that no nation is sufficient unto itself, and that our prosperity depends in the long run, not upon the failure of our neighbors but their successes. ~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir
2008
I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it. ~ Christopher Isherwood
2009
If you can't see God in All, You can't see God at All. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi
2010
Happiness comes out of contentment, and contentment always comes out of service. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi
2011
Spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile. ~ Mother Teresa
2012
The true definition of a snob is one who craves for what separates men rather than for what unites them.
~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir ~
2013
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
~ Mother Teresa ~
2014
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
~ Mother Teresa ~
2015
I often feel that worse than the most fiendish Nazis were those Germans who went along with the persecution of the Jews not because they really disliked them but because it was the thing.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
2016
Once again the crust of civilization has worn thin, and beneath can be heard the muttering of primeval fires. Once again many accepted principles of government have been overthrown, and the world has become a laboratory where immature and feverish minds experiment with unknown forces. Once again problems cannot be comfortably limited, for science has brought the nations into an uneasy bondage to each other.
~ John Buchan ~
2017
The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
2018
They have planned a life for you — from the cradle to the grave and beyond — which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up — before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whisky, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
2019
I see God in every human being. When I wash the leper's wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a beautiful experience?
~ Mother Teresa ~
2020
I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
~ Mother Teresa ~
2021
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
~ John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir ~
2022
Christopher would find himself able to believe — as a possibility, at least — that an eternal impersonal presence (call it "the soul" if you like) exists within all creatures and is other than the mutable non-eternal "person." He would then feel that all his earlier difficulties had been merely semantic; that he could have been converted to this belief at any time in his life, if only someone had used the right words to explain it to him. Now, I doubt this. I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
2023
Most true points are fine points. There never was a dispute between mortals where both sides hadn't a bit of right.
~ John Buchan ~
2024
Knowledge is the only power — now as ever. A little mechanical device will wreck your navies. A new chemical combination will upset every rule of war. It is the same with our commerce. One or two minute changes might sink Britain to the level of Ecuador, or give China the key of the world's wealth. And yet we never dream that these things are possible. We think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe.
~ John Buchan ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…

The Quote of the Day (QOTD) is a prominent feature of the Wikiquote Main Page. Thank you for submitting, reviewing, and ranking suggestions!

Ranking system
4 : Excellent – should definitely be used. (This is the utmost ranking and should be used by any editor for only one quote at a time for each date.)
3 : Very Good – strong desire to see it used.
2 : Good – some desire to see it used.
1 : Acceptable – but with no particular desire to see it used.
0 : Not acceptable – not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.
An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
Thank you for participating!

Suggestions

edit

If those lessons are truly learned, then Columbia's crew will have made an indelible contribution to the endeavor each one valued so greatly. ~ CAIB report volume I, released 26 August 2003

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 07:37, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 ~ lacking context as presented. I might rank an extended version of it higher, but am not really inclined toward it.
  • 1 Zarbon 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC) No context.
  • 1 allixpeeke (talk) 03:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me. ~ Christopher Isherwood

  • 3 InvisibleSun 04:56, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 19:18, 25 August 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 1 Zarbon 16:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC) Who is the "he" in "he said to himself"?
  • 2 (leaning toward 3) allixpeeke (talk) 03:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Tomorrow always becomes today and yesterday is always gone. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  • 3 because nothing stays forever. Zarbon 06:08, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 23:58, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 InvisibleSun 22:17, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 01:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
  • 3 allixpeeke (talk) 03:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come.We have only today. ~ Mother Teresa

The snail lives the way I like to live; he carries his own home with him. ~ Julio Cortázar

Women are, and should be treated as, the equals of men.
~ Wendy McElroy ~


Note: In the U. S., 26 August is Women's Equality Day.

  • 4 allixpeeke (talk) 03:30, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 22:48, 25 August 2015 (UTC) I agree with the sentiment, but don’t believe the rather simple expression is all that original to this particular manifestation of it.

As an organized force, American feminism can be dated from the radical anti-slavery movement, known as abolitionism, that arose in the early 1830s and coalesced around the libertarian William Lloyd Garrison.  Although there were many courageous women who advanced the status of women prior to this period, such as Anne Hutchinson and Frances Wright, they spoke out as individuals rather than as part of a self-conscious organization dedicated to women's rights.

Abolitionism demanded the immediate cessation of slavery on the grounds that every human being was a self-owner and had a moral jurisdiction over his or her own body.  Gradually, abolitionist women began to apply the principle of self-ownership not only to the slaves, but also to themselves.

~ Wendy McElroy ~


Note: In the U. S., 26 August is Women's Equality Day.

If "war is the health of state," as Randolph Bourne claimed, then it is the death of individualism.  At its roots, the individualist tradition is anti-statist, and war inevitably involves an increase in state power that never seems to roll back to prewar levels when peace resumes.
~ Wendy McElroy ~


  • 3 (leaning toward 4) allixpeeke (talk) 03:30, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
  • 2 though the previous quote by this person is relevant to this date for the mentioned reason, I do not know that this one is.
The paternalist is a sentimentalist at heart, and the sentimentalist is always potentially cruel.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
The images which remained in the memory are not in themselves terrible or rigorous: they are of boot-lockers, wooden desks, lists on boards, name-tags in clothes — yes, the name pre-eminently; the name which in a sense makes you nameless, less individual rather than more so: Bradshaw-Isherwood, C.W. in its place on some alphabetical list; the cold daily, hourly reminder that you are not the unique, the loved, the household’s darling, but just one among many.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
He now realized that he must dissociate himself from the Communists, even as a fellow traveler. He might, in certain situations, accept them as allies but he could never regard them as comrades. He must never again give way to embarrassment, never deny the rights of his tribe, never apologize for its existence, never think of sacrificing himself masochistically on the altar of that false god of the totalitarians, the Greatest Good of the Greatest Number — whose priests are alone empowered to decide what "good" is.
~ Christopher Isherwood ~
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
~ Mother Teresa ~
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through meditation, spirit of prayer, and sacrifice, by an intense inner life.
~ Mother Teresa ~

"Isn't it extraordinary that the Prime Minister of our country can't even urge his Party to back his own position. Weak! Weak! Weak!" - Tony Blair

Civilisation needs more than the law to hold it together. You see, all mankind are not equally willing to accept as divine justice what is called human law.
~ John Buchan ~
Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.
~ John Buchan ~


Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=August_26&oldid=3568493"