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September 3

date

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos. ~ Jim Hightower
2004
I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy. ~ J. D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye
2005
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~ Frederick Douglass
2006
Your pretended fear lest error should step in, is like the man that would keep all the wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it. ~ Oliver Cromwell
2007
A harbor, even if it is a little harbor, is a good thing, since adventurers come into it as well as go out, and the life in it grows strong, because it takes something from the world, and has something to give in return. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett (born 3 September 1849)
2008
The old poets little knew what comfort they could be to a man. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett
2009
Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling work-horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. ~ Louis Sullivan (born 3 September 1856)
2010
Your patience may have long to wait,
Whether in little things or great,
But all good luck, you soon will learn,
Must come to those who nobly earn.
Who hunts the hay-field over
Will find the four-leaved clover.
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~
2011
The warm sun kissed the earth
To consecrate thy birth,
And from his close embrace
Thy radiant face
Sprang into sight,
A blossoming delight.
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~
2012
The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper— whether little or great, it belongs to Literature.
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~
2013
How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it. Yet evidently the true object of education, now as ever, is to develop the capabilities of the head and of the heart.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2014
The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer. For in him the dreamer is fortified against destruction by a far-seeing eye, a virile mind, a strong will, a robust courage.
And so has perished the kindly dreamer — on the cross or in the garret.
A democracy should not let its dreamers perish. They are its life, its guaranty against decay.
Thus would I expand the sympathies of youth.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2015
It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit. It must stand for the actual, vital first-hand experiences of the one who made it, and must represent his deep-down impression not only of physical nature but more especially and necessarily his understanding of the out-working of that Great Spirit which makes nature so intelligible to us that it ceases to be a phantasm and becomes a sweet, a superb, a convincing Reality.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2016
An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet … this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2017
High ideals make a people strong. … decay comes when ideals wane.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2018
The true architectural art, that art toward which I would lead you, rests, not upon scholarship but upon human powers; and, therefore, it is to be tested, not by the fruits of scholarship, but by the touch-stone of humanity.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2019
What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2020
True art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2021
Unceasingly the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things, and this unspeakable process we call birth and growth. Awhile the spirit and the matter fade away together, and it is this that we call decadence, death. These two happenings seem jointed and interdependent, blended into one like a bubble and its iridescence, and they seem borne along upon a slowly moving air. This air is wonderful past all understanding.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2022
He who knows naught of dreaming can, likewise, never attain the heights of power and possibility in persuading the mind to act.
He who dreams not creates not.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2023
True art, springing fresh from Nature, must have in it, to live, much of the glance of an eye, much of the sound of a voice, much of the life of a life. … Nature is strong, generous, comprehensive, fecund, subtile … in growth and decadence she continually sets forth the drama of man's life. … thro' the rotating seasons, thro' the procession of the years, thro' the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
2024
We are rounding out our absorbing study of Democracy. Thus, turning slowly upon the momentous axis of our theme, are we coming more and more fully into the light of our sun: the refulgent and resplendent and life-giving sun of our art — an art of aspirant democracy! Let us then be on our way; for our sun is climbing ever higher. Let us be adoing; lest it set before we know the glory and the import of its light, and we sink again into the twilight and the gloom from which we have come.
~ Louis Sullivan ~


2025
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Once you learn to read you will be forever free. ~ Frederick Douglass, who boarded a train that day on 1838 on his way to freedom.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. ~ Frederick Douglass

It is not my design to drink or to sleep, but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone. ~ Oliver Cromwell (died 3 September 1658)

In the life of each of us … there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett

  • 3 Kalki 23:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 2 Zarbon 04:46, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Ningauble 15:51, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 14:24, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

"Dear robin," said this sad young flower,
"Perhaps you'd not mind trying
To find a nice white frill for me,
Some day when you are flying?"

"You silly thing!" the robin said;
"I think you must be crazy!
I'd rather be my honest self
Than any made-up daisy.

"You're nicer in your own bright gown,
The little children love you;
Be the best buttercup you can,
And think no flower above you.

"Though swallows leave me out of sight,
We'd better keep our places;
Perhaps the world would all go wrong
With one too many daisies.

"Look bravely up into the sky,
And be content with knowing
That God wished for a buttercup
Just here, where you are growing."
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~

  • 3 Kalki 20:35, 2 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 1 Zarbon 04:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 14:24, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

OR these stanzas separately:

I'd rather be my honest self
Than any made-up daisy.
~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~

Though swallows leave me out of sight,
We'd better keep our places;
Perhaps the world would all go wrong
With one too many daisies.

Look bravely up into the sky,
And be content with knowing
That God wished for a buttercup
Just here, where you are growing.

~ Sarah Orne Jewett ~
The human mind, like the silk-worm oppressed with the fullness of its own accumulation, has spun about itself gradually and slowly a cocoon that at last has shut out the light of the world from which it drew the substance of its thread. But this darkness has produced the chrysalis, and we within the darkness feel the beginning of our throes. The inevitable change, after centuries upon centuries of preparation, is about to begin.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
Thro' the rotating seasons, thro' the procession of the years, thro' the march of the centuries, permeating all, sustaining all, there murmurs the still, small voice of a power that holds us in the hollow of its hand.
~ Louis Sullivan ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 02:17, 2 September 2014 (UTC); but with a lean toward 2, as I used this as part of another quote in 2023. — Kalki 2023·09·02
  • For us, the Battle of the Atlantic was becoming a private war. If you were in it, you knew all about it. You knew how to keep watch on filthy nights, and how to go without sleep; and how to bury the dead and how to die without wasting anyone's time.



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