QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
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Today is Thursday, May 23, 2024; it is now 14:32 (UTC)
- May 1
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- May 2
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- May 3
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To be my royal bodyguard, go you Straightway into the leafy places, where Greenwoods have grown in nature's way and not From a man's sowing.
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~ Gnaeus Naevius ~
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- May 4
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- May 5
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- May 6
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- May 7
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- May 8
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It used to be said, that in places like this, nature eventually failed to support man, the truth is exactly the reverse, here man failed to support nature. Ten thousand years ago man regarded the natural world as divine, but as he domesticated animals and plants so nature lost some of its mystery and appeared to be little more than a larder that could be raided with impunity.
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~ David Attenborough ~
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- May 9
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The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
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~ Alan Bennett ~ in ~ The History Boys ~
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- May 10
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- May 11
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Get up, get up for shame! The blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. See how Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree! Each flower has wept and bow’d toward the east Above an hour since, yet you not drest; Nay! not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said And sung their thankful hymns, ’tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in, Whereas a thousand virgins on this day Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.
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~ Robert Herrick ~
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- May 12
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I have seen flowers come in stony places And kind things done by men with ugly faces, And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races, So I trust, too.
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~ John Masefield ~
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- May 13
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I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them or between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence — what I can only describe as a sense of peace, which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry.
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~ Georges Braque ~
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- May 14
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As there are a very great variety of religious sects in the world (and which are probably adapted to different constitutions under different circumstances, seeing there are many good and conscientious characters in each), it is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right.
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~ Robert Owen ~
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- May 15
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- May 16
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Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men beneath the tree; They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
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~ Adrienne Rich ~
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- May 17
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The infirmity of human intelligence is short sight. In too many cases, the wiseacres are dunces of a sort, who lose sight of the simplicity of things, and stifle and obscure it with formulae and trivialities. It is the small things that one learns from books, not the great ones. And even while they are saying that they do not wish for war they are doing all they can to perpetuate it. They nourish national vanity and the love of supremacy by force. "We alone," they say, each behind his shelter, "we alone are the guardians of courage and loyalty, of ability and good taste!" Out of the greatness and richness of a country they make something like a consuming disease. Out of patriotism — which can be respected as long as it remains in the domain of sentiment and art on exactly the same footing as the sense of family and local pride, all equally sacred — out of patriotism they make a Utopian and impracticable idea, unbalancing the world, a sort of cancer which drains all the living force, spreads everywhere and crushes life, a contagious cancer which culminates either in the crash of war or in the exhaustion and suffocation of armed peace. They pervert the most admirable of moral principles. How many are the crimes of which they have made virtues merely by dowering them with the word "national"? They distort even truth itself. For the truth which is eternally the same they substitute each their national truth. So many nations, so many truths; and thus they falsify and twist the truth.
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~ Henri Barbusse ~
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- May 18
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It is better to do nothing than to do harm. Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work. A little time spent in learning to appreciate facts is not time wasted, and the work that will be done afterwards is far less likely to be harmful than the work done by those who need a continual inflation of their ego as a stimulant to their energy.
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~ Bertrand Russell ~ in ~ The Conquest of Happiness ~
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- May 19
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- May 20
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The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed for ever, it may be thrown back for centuries. … Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.
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~ John Stuart Mill ~
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- May 21
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What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. ... It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.
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~ Learned Hand ~
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- May 22
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A Mahayana teaching with a strong Taoist infusion, Ch'an or Zen cast off the dead weight of priestly ritual and mindless chanting of the sutras or scriptures — the records of the Buddha's teachings — and returned to the simple zazen way of Shakyamuni. In a statement attributed to the First Chinese Patriarch, Bodhidharma, an old monk from India who is loosely associated with the birth of Zen, the new teaching was described as "a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded upon words or letters. By pointing directly to man's own mind, it lets him see into his own true nature and thus attain Buddhahood."
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~ Peter Matthiessen ~
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- May 23
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- May 24
Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 24, 2024
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- May 25
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I always swing at the ball with all my might. I hit or miss big and when I miss I know it long before the umpire calls a strike on me, for every muscle in my back, shoulders and arms is groaning, "You missed it."
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~ Babe Ruth ~
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- May 26
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Youth’s bright palace Is overthrown, With its diamond sceptre And golden throne; As a time-worn stone Its turrets are humbled— All hath crumbled But grief alone!
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~ Denis Florence MacCarthy ~
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- May 27
Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 27, 2024
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- May 28
Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 28, 2024
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- May 29
Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 29, 2024
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- May 30
Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 30, 2024
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- May 31
Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 31, 2024
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QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>
Today is Thursday, May 23, 2024; it is now 14:32 (UTC)