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| Quotations of the Day: December 2005 |
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December 31, 2005
The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.
—Lord Chesterfield
December 30, 2005
The tumult and the shouting dies; / The Captains and the Kings depart: / Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, / An humble and a contrite heart. / Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, / Lest we forget — lest we forget!
—Rudyard Kipling
December 29, 2005
Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.
—Jean Anouilh
December 28, 2005
If I let my fingers wander idly over the keys of a typewriter it might happen that my screed made an intelligible sentence. If an army of monkeys were strumming on typewriters they might write all the books in the British Museum.
—Sir Arthur Eddington
December 27, 2005
In the fields of observation chance favors only those minds which are prepared.
—Louis Pasteur
December 26, 2005
Bright-eyed Fancy, hov’ring o’er, / Scatters from her pictured urn / Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.
—Thomas Gray
December 25, 2005
Grant us a common faith that man shall know bread and peace—that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march toward the clean world our hands can make.
—Stephen Vincent Benét
December 24, 2005
Peace, peace is what I seek and public calm, / Endless extinction of unhappy hates.
—Matthew Arnold
December 23, 2005
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.
—Clarence Darrow
December 22, 2005
Life is so full of meaning and of purpose, so full of beauty — beneath its covering — that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then to claim it: that is all!
—Fra Giovanni Giocondo
December 21, 2005
If the barricades went up in our streets and the poor became masters, I think the priests would escape, I fear the gentlemen would; but I believe the gutters would simply be running with the blood of philanthropists.
—G.K. Chesterton
December 20, 2005
Fate wings with every wish th’ afflictive dart, / Each gift of nature, and each grace of art.
—Samuel Johnson
December 19, 2005
Childhood and youth are vanity.
—Ecclesiastes 11:10
December 18, 2005
Here [the Hayden Planetarium] the skeptic finds chaos and the believer further evidence that the hand that made us is divine.
—Robert Moses
December 17, 2005
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier
December 16, 2005
It was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.
—Jane Austen
December 15, 2005
Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnish’d me / From mine own library with volumes that / I prize above my dukedom.
—William Shakespeare
December 14, 2005
Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.
—George Washington
December 13, 2005
A prudent cuckold (and there are many such at Paris) pockets his horns, when he cannot gore with them; and will not add to the triumph of his maker, by only butting with them ineffectually.
—Lord Chesterfield
December 12, 2005
And now the end is near / And so I face the final curtain, / I’ll state my case of which I’m certain. / I’ve lived a life that’s full, I traveled each and ev’ry highway, / And more, much more than this. I did it my way.
—Frank Sinatra
December 11, 2005
Great artists have no country.
—Alfred de Musset
December 10, 2005
We must do the thing we must / Before the thing we may; / We are unfit for any trust / Till we can and do obey.
—George Macdonald
December 9, 2005
My voice is still for war. / Gods! can a Roman senate long debate / Which of the two to choose, slavery or death?
—Joseph Addison
December 8, 2005
There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
—James Thurber
December 7, 2005
While the hollow oak our palace is, / Our heritage the sea.
—Allan Cunningham
December 6, 2005
Poems are made by fools like me, / But only God can make a tree.
—Joyce Kilmer
December 5, 2005
Fear not, the people may be deluded for a moment, but cannot be corrupted.
—Andrew Jackson
December 4, 2005
Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
December 3, 2005
It is not Justice the servant of men, but accident, hazard, Fortune — the ally of patient Time — that holds an even and scrupulous balance.
—Joseph Conrad
December 2, 2005
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.
—John Brown
December 1, 2005
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home—so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.… Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
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