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April 16

From Wikiquote

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Curse on all laws but those which love has made! ~ Alexander Pope
2005
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. ~ Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator (born 16 April 1889)
2006
The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. ~ Yeshua (Jesus Christ) (Easter Sunday 2006)
2007
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. ~ Anatole France (born 16 April 1844)
2008
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~ Anatole France
2009
What one man can do himself directly is but little. If however he can stir up ten others to take up the task he has accomplished much. ~ Wilbur Wright
2010
It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously. ~ Peter Ustinov
2011
It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be. ~ Anatole France
2012
It is by acts, and not by ideas that people live. ~ Anatole France
2013
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them.
~ Anatole France ~
2014
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
~ William Feather ~
  • proposed by Zarbon; this originally was selected as having been a quote of Anatole France, to whom it had sometimes been attributed to since the 1990s. During the day it was used as QOTD, this was found to be a misattribution, and the proper attribution given to William Feather.
2015
The gods conform scrupulously to the sentiments of their worshippers: they have reasons for so doing. Pay attention to this. … The Emperor Julian's morals were almost those of St. Gregory Nazianzen. There is nothing in this but what is natural and usual. The transformations undergone by morals and ideas are never sudden. The greatest changes in social life are wrought imperceptibly, and are only seen from afar. Christianity did not secure a foothold until such time as the condition of morals accommodated itself to it, and as Christianity itself had become adjusted to the condition of morals. It was unable to substitute itself for paganism until such time as paganism came to resemble it, and itself came to resemble paganism.
~ Anatole France ~
2016
The acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. For nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known.
~ Leonardo da Vinci ~
2017
Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
That Spring is risen, is risen again,
That Life is risen, is risen again,
That Love is risen, is risen again, and
Love is Lord of all.
~ Alfred Noyes ~
  • proposed by Kalki for Easter Sunday 2017.
2018
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
~ Anatole France ~
2019
The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last.
On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.
~ Victor Hugo ~
in
~ The Hunchback of Notre-Dame ~
  • proposed by Kalki, in regard to the massively destructive fire at Notre-Dame de Paris.
2020
We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,
And pass both tropics and behold the poles,
When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,
And unacquainted still with our own souls.
~ John Davies ~
2021
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
~ Anatole France ~
2022
We are in the days preceding Easter. We are preparing to celebrate the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over sin and death — over sin and death — not over someone and against someone else. But today, there is a war. Why do we want to win like this, according to the way of the world? There are only losses this way. Why not allow Him to win? Christ bore his cross to free us from the dominion of evil. He died so that life, love, peace may reign.
Let the weapons be put down! Let the Easter truce begin. But not to reload the weapons and pick up the fighting again — no! — a truce that will lead to peace, through real negotiation that is also willing to make some sacrifice for the good of the people. Indeed, what victory is there in planting a flag on a pile of rubble?
~ Pope Francis ~
2023
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
~ Anatole France ~
2024
It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.
~ Anatole France ~
2025
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Suggestions

[edit]

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. This I conceive to be fortunate, for man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery... ~ Wilbur Wright (born 16 April 1867)

There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones. ~ Kingsley Amis (born 16 April 1922)

  • 3 Kalki 14:54, 10 April 2007 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 09:39, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
  • 3. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 21:02, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 23:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Why did my parents send me to the schools
That I with knowledge might enrich my mind?
Since the desire to know first made men fools,
And did corrupt the root of all mankind.
~ John Davies

What can we know, or what can we discern,
When error chokes the windows of the mind,
The diverse forms of things, how can we learn,
That have been ever from our birthday blind?
~ John Davies

I know my life's a pain and but a span,
I know my sense is mocked with everything;
And to conclude, I know myself a man,
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.
~ John Davies

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. ~ Peter Ustinov

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy. ~ Peter Ustinov

  • 3 Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

The point of living, and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come. ~ Peter Ustinov

  • 3 Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 1 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Things which seemed reasonable were often found to be untrue, and things which seemed unreasonable were sometimes true. ~ Wilbur Wright

  • 2 Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 01:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

Be glad you're fifty — and
That you got there while things were nice,
In a world worth looking at twice.
So here's wishing you many more years,
But not all that many. Cheers!
~ Kingsley Amis

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues. ~ Anatole France

  • 3 and strong lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 01:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one. ~ Anatole France

  • 3 Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 01:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

He had no knowledge and had no desire to acquire any; wherein he conformed to his genius whose engaging fragility he forbore to overload; his instinct fortunately telling him that it was better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot. ~ Anatole France

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil. ~ Anatole France

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. ~ Anatole France

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference. ~ Anatole France

  • 3 Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 01:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.

People who have no weaknesses are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage of them. ~ Anatole France

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever. ~ Anatole France

  • 3 Zarbon 00:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 01:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
~ Anatole France ~
You do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand.
~ Anatole France ~
Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.
~ Anatole France ~
You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night.
~ Anatole France ~
If we study the movements which govern the destinies of societies, we may perhaps discover signs that the era of violent deeds is coming to an end. War, which was formerly a standing institution among nations, is now intermittent, and the periods of peace have become of longer duration than those of war.
~ Anatole France ~
There are some men who cannot stand too much perfection. They see it … as a disease, … which must be stamped out at it's first rash showing.
~ Peter Ustinov ~


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