Wikiquote

December 24

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ)
2004
I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.
Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.
~ Sydney Carter ~
2005
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
~ "A Visit from St. Nicholas"
2006
A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself. ~ John Muir
2007
Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. ~ Francis Pharcellus Church in "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"
2008
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. ~ John Muir (Date of death)
2009
People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success. ~ Norman Vincent Peale (Date of death)
2010
Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city’s jar,
That there abides a peace of thine,
Man did not make, and cannot mar.
~ Matthew Arnold ~ (born December 24, 1822)
2011
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry. ~ Matthew Arnold
2012
The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.
~ Dana Gioia ~
2013
If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the word ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion, they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day, they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers, they grow tiresome to some of us … the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2014
I feel like a spinning top or a Dreidel
The spinning don't stop when you leave the cradle
You just slow down
Round and around this world you go
Spinning through the lives of the people you know
We all slow down.
~ Don McLean ~
2015
Give us, O God, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure.
Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.
Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts.
And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace.
~ Frank Borman ~
2016
I think it will be found that the grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2017
Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill’d;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day —
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2018
"God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.
~ Frank Borman ~
  • proposed by Kalki, for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo flight, the Earthrise photograph, and of this message, in 2018.
2019
As far as I'm concerned we are all God.
That's the difference.
If you really think another guy is God he doesn't lock you up …
Funny about that.
~ Ram Dass ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to his recent death.
2020
What actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that which interests them is permanent and the same also.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2021
He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2022
Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2023
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us, to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
2024
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To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper —
metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa
carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
~ Dana Gioia (born December 24, 1950)

So listen to them, heed them: Who never touch the earth, can never be in heaven. ~ Adam Mickiewicz

  • 2 Zarbon 06:11, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 15:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

If one has not given everything, one has given nothing. ~ Georges Guynemer

  • 2 Zarbon 06:11, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 15:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

So you're tired of living
Feel like you might give in
Well don't.
It's not your time ~ Tomas Kalnoky

  • 4 Zarbon 06:11, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 15:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

So tell me: how long do you think you can go before you lose it all?
Before they call you bluff and watch you fall?
I don't know, but I'd like to think I had control
At some point, but I let it go and lost my soul ~ Tomas Kalnoky

  • 2 Zarbon 06:11, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 15:23, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them... Benjamin Rush (dob O.S.)

  • 3 bystander (talk) 20:04, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
    • May be moved to January 4th if that is more suitable.
  • 3 ♞☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 20:52, 20 December 2012 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4, for either date.

Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights. Benjamin Rush

  • 3 bystander (talk) 20:04, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
    • May be moved to January 4th if that is more suitable.
  • 3 ♞☮♌︎Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 20:52, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

What is superstition, but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb. ~ Fritz Leiber (dob)

What was life worth, anyway, if you had to sit around remembering not to mention this, that, and the other thing because someone else might be upset? ~ Fritz Leiber

In the wake of a Big Change, cultures and individuals are transposed, it’s true, yet in the main they continue much as they were, except for the usual scattering of unfortunate but statistically meaningless accidents. ~ Fritz Leiber

They’ve heard about space but they still don’t believe in it. They haven’t been out here to see for themselves that there isn’t any giant elephant under the earth, holding it up, and a giant tortoise holding up the elephant. If I say “planet” and “spaceship” to them, they still think “horoscope” and “flying saucer”. ~ Fritz Leiber

The free-thinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
We do not what we ought,
What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
Hither and thither spins
The wind-borne mirroring soul,
A thousand glimpses wins,
And never sees a whole.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflexion, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
Everything in our political life tends to hide from us that there is anything wiser than our ordinary selves.
~ Matthew Arnold ~
There is an inescapable imperative about certain industrial developments. If there is not a safe road of advance, then a dangerous one will invariably be taken.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
The Devourers want to brood about their great service to the many universes—it is their claim that servile customers make the most obedient subjects for the gods.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
The Devourers are the most accomplished merchants in all the many universes — so accomplished, indeed, that they sell only trash. There is a deep necessity in this, for the Devourers must occupy all their cunning in perfecting their methods of selling and so have not an instant to spare in considering the worth of what they sell.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
The Devourers want not only the patronage of all beings in all universes, but—doubtless because they are afraid someone will some day raise the ever-unpleasant question of the true worth of things—they want all their customers reduced to a state of slavish and submissive suggestibility, so that they are fit for nothing whatever but to gawk at and buy the trash the Devourers offer for sale.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
Of course, if you assume a big enough conspiracy, you can explain anything, including the cosmos itself.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
There was always something new to be seen in the unchanging night sky.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
Thoughts are dangerous, he told himself, and thoughts against all science, all sanity, all civilized intelligence, are the most dangerous of all.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
Devils may be nothing but beings intent on their purpose, which now happens to collide with yours.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
The gods spend the wealth the universe gathers, they scan the wonders and fling them to nothingness. That’s why they’re the gods! I told you they were devils.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
A scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
Sometimes I wonder if our memories are as good as we think they are and if the whole past wasn’t once entirely different from anything we remember, and we’ve forgotten that we forgot.
~ Fritz Leiber ~
Poets are wiser than anyone because they’re the only people who have the guts to think and feel at the same time.
~ Fritz Leiber ~

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart... filled it, too, with melody that would last forever. - Bess Streeter Aldrich


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