December 29

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
I will make company with creators, with harvesters, with rejoicers; I will show them the rainbow and the stairway to the Superman. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2005 & 2006 (mistakenly used twice)
If I am shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet. ~ Andrew Johnson (born 29 December 1808)
2007
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
2008
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man. ~ Pablo Casals
2009
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Date of death)
2010
Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home. ~ William Ewart Gladstone (born December 29, 1809)
2011
Yes, the springtime was in need of you. Often a star
waited for you to espy it and sense its light.
A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past,
or as you walked below an open window,
a violin gave itself to your hearing.
All this was trust. But could you manage it?
Were you not always distraught by expectation,
as if all this were announcing the arrival
of a beloved?

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
2012
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
~ William Ewart Gladstone ~
2013
Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2014
Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
~ Mary Tyler Moore ~
2015
There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.
~ William Ewart Gladstone ~
2016
Men learn little from others' experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
The cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2017
We praise thee, O God, for thy glory displayed
in all the creatures of the earth,
In the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the storm,
in all of thy creatures, both the hunters and the hunted,
For all things exist as seen by thee,
only as known by thee, all things exist
Only in thy light, and thy glory is declared
even in that which denies thee;
the darkness declares the glory of light.
Those who deny thee could not deny, if thou didst not exist;
and their denial is never complete,
for if it were so, they would not exist.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
2018
Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow.
Pain nourishes your courage.
You have to fail in order to practice being brave.
~ Mary Tyler Moore ~
2019
Every child, at birth, is the Universal Man. But, as it grows, we turn it into "a petty man." It should be the function of education to turn it again into the original "Universal Man."
The child which by birth was the universal man is fettered by us with such constraints as country, language, religion, caste, race and colour. To free it from all these limitations and transform it into "the enlightened soul", that is to say, the universal man, — this should become the first and foremost function of our education, culture, civilization, and what not.
~ Kuvempu ~
2020
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the world.
~ William Ewart Gladstone ~
2021
Winnow the chaff of a hundred creeds
Beyond these systems, hollow as reeds,
Turn unhorizened to where Truth leads,
To be unhoused, O my soul!
~ Kuvempu ~
2022
Be unhoused, O my soul!
Only the Infinite be your goal.

Leave those myriad forms behind,
Leave the million names that bind.
A flash will pierce your heart and mind,
And unhouse you, O my soul!
~ Kuvempu ~


2023
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
in
~ Murder in the Cathedral ~
2024
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Suggestions edit

I care not what happens when I am dead and gone. ~ Madame de Pompadour

  • 2 Zarbon 06:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 00:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Though life seems painful, at the same time it is wonderful. ~ Ritsuko Okazaki

  • 3 Zarbon 06:29, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 00:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

The church shall be open, even to our enemies.
We are not here to triumph by fighting, by stratagem, or by resistance,
Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast
And have conquered.

~ T. S. Eliot ~


That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that's become my enemy because that's what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything. ~ William Gaddis Agape Agape (dob)


He stood there unsteady in the cold, mumbling syllables which almost resolved into her name, as though he could recall, and summon back, a time before death entered the world, before accident, before magic, and before magic despaired, to become religion. ~ William Gaddis The Recognitions


It is the bliss of childhood that we are being warped most when we know it the least. ~ William Gaddis The Recognitions


Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers. ~ Mary Tyler Moore (goodreads author quotes)

  • 3 bystander (talk) 18:48, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
  • 3 ♌︎Kalki ⚓︎ 22:23, 21 December 2012 (UTC) — but tempering my ranking, as I have not yet located the original source of this, but the earliest reference I have found indicates it to be a line of her character "Mary Richards" in her show, rather than something originating with her personally.

Amidst the early morning dew
Walking across the greenery
And in the evening that is scary
While taking a breath,
Oh, flower, I listen to your song,
Oh flower, I defeat your love.
~ Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa



In me is the sky, in me lies the earth.
~ Kuvempu ~

The infinite Yoga knows no end,
Endless the quest you apprehend.
You'll grow infinite and ascend,
When you are unhoused, O my soul!
~ Kuvempu ~