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June 16

From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll
2005
I cannot think we are useless or Usen would not have created us. He created all tribes of men and certainly had a righteous purpose in creating each. ~ Geronimo (born 16 June 1829)
2006
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. ~ Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, 16 June 1858)
2007
It's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses
2008
When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity — but actually it's about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. ~ Joyce Carol Oates
2009
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals to discovery. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses
2010
It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses
2011
The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious. ~ James Joyce in Ulysses
2012
If others have their will Ann hath a way.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2013
Values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.
~ Enoch Powell ~
2014
I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2015
As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2016
Secrets, silent, stony
sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their
tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2017
Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions.
~ Joyce Carol Oates ~
2018
Nothing is accidental in the universe — this is one of my Laws of Physics — except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.
~ Joyce Carol Oates ~
2019
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework — you can still be writing, because you have that space.
~ Joyce Carol Oates ~
2020
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.
~ Abraham Lincoln ~
  • proposed by Kalki, as the date of Lincoln's delivery of this "House Divided" speech, in 1858.
2021
my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2022
I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2023
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely.
~ Adam Smith ~
2024
Our national epic has yet to be written.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
2025
Our national epic has yet to be written.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
  • proposed by Kalki in 2015; used in 2025, as only after posting it did I notice that this tally page had not been updated in 2024. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 00:23, 16 June 2025 (UTC)
2026
There are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn't realize that there are people so stupid you can't show them anything.
~ Murray Leinster ~
2027
Rank or add further suggestions…

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD, or from Ulysses by James Joyce (Bloomsday):

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Suggestions

[edit]

Adam Smith (16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790)

Murray Leinster (16 June 1896 – 8 June 1975)

Joyce Carol Oates (born 16 June 1938)

I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
Come forth Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship.
~ James Joyce ~
in
~ Ulysses ~
  • He that to ancient wreaths can bring no more
    From his own worth, dies bankrupt on the score. ~ John Cleveland (dob)
    • 3 Ficaia (talk) 18:34, 31 May 2024 (UTC) We could also run the slightly modernised text quoted in The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton (1897), p. 10:
      He, who to ancient wreaths can bring no more
      From his own worth, dies bankrupt on the score.
I test my theories about how to make discoveries by using them to make discoveries.
~ Murray Leinster ~
I've got an impossible job on my hands … and if I succeed at it, there's an inconceivable one to follow.
~ Murray Leinster ~
My purpose is not to make profits, but to keep people from being killed. Quaint, eh? But I'm one of the people I don't want killed.
~ Murray Leinster ~
The unfamiliar is not necessarily unreasonable.
~ Murray Leinster ~
The secret of getting along with people is that of postponing quarrels.
~ Murray Leinster ~
Most men develop convictions about the cosmos and such beliefs come in two varieties. One kind is a conviction that the cosmos does not make sense. That it exists by chance and changes by chance and human beings do not matter. This view produces a fine complacency. The other kind is a belief that the cosmos does make sense, and was designed with the idea that people were going to live in it, and that what they do and what happens to them is important. This theory seems to be depressing.
~ Murray Leinster ~
From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss.
~ Murray Leinster ~
A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.
~ Murray Leinster ~
Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.
~ Murray Leinster ~
I've never noticed that being nonsensical keeps things from happening. Don't you ever read about politics?
~ Murray Leinster ~
It was totally unrealistic to think that because there had been wildly unlikely coincidences in the immediate past, that there would be more wildly unlikely ones turning up in orderly succession. Yet...
~ Murray Leinster ~
Desolate and dreary as the little town was in the world of today, it was infinitely more liveable than the same town of nearly two centuries before. There had been much progress in how to do things. It was regrettable that there was less progress in knowledge of things worth doing.
~ Murray Leinster ~
Eminent men were called on to take command and arrange suitable measures. They immediately acted as eminent men so often do; they took action to retain their eminence. Their first instinct was caution. When a man is important enough, it does not matter if he never does anything. It is only required of him that he do nothing wrong. Eminent figures all over the world prepared to do nothing wrong. They were not so concerned to do anything right.
~ Murray Leinster ~
When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked.
~ Murray Leinster ~
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