Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 2011

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May 1
 

I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.

~ Joseph Addison ~

 


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May 2
 

Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.

~ Novalis ~

 


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May 3
 

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? … Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

~ Golda Meir ~

 


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May 4
 

Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

~ Horace Mann ~

 


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May 5
  Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.
~ Karl Marx ~
 


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May 6
 

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse. The horse provides the locomotor energy, and the rider has the prerogative of determining the goal and of guiding the movements of his powerful mount towards it. But all too often in the relations between the ego and the id we find a picture of the less ideal situation in which the rider is obliged to guide his horse in the direction in which it itself wants to go.

~ Sigmund Freud ~

 


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May 7
 

You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

~ Edwin H. Land ~

   
 


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May 8
 

Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?

~ Friedrich Hayek ~

 


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May 9
 

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.

~ J. M. Barrie ~

 


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May 10
 

I do not preach universal salvation, what I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment.

~ Karl Barth ~

 


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May 11
 

Silence is difficult and arduous, it is not to be played with. It isn't something that you can experience by reading a book, or by listening to a talk, or by sitting together, or by retiring into a wood or a monastery. I am afraid none of these things will bring about this silence. This silence demands intense psychological work. You have to be burningly aware of your snobbishness, aware of your fears, your anxieties, your sense of guilt. And when you die to all that, then out of that dying comes the beauty of silence.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~

 


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May 12

 

People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.

~ Florence Nightingale ~


 


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May 13
 

If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love.

~ Julian of Norwich ~

 


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May 14

 

What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.

~ Robert Owen ~

 


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May 15
 

There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.

~ Katherine Anne Porter ~

 


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May 16
 

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.

~ Marcus Aurelius ~

 


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May 17

 


While all brutal forces clash with themselves, all moral forces make mighty harmony together.

~ Henri Barbusse ~




 


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May 18

 

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

~ Bertrand Russell ~

 


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May 19

 

To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.

~ Abraham Pais ~

 


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May 20
 

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

~ Honoré de Balzac ~

 


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May 21
 

Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
~ Alexander Pope ~

 


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May 22

 

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

Arthur Conan Doyle
in
The Sign of the Four

 


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May 23

 

Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard,
"Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts."
Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment.

~ Margaret Fuller ~

 


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May 24
 


Magic words and incantations are as fatal to our science as they are to any other. Methods, when classified and separated, acquire their true bearing and perspective as a means to an end, not as ends in themselves. We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

~ Benjamin N. Cardozo ~

 


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May 25
 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

~ Theodore Roethke ~


 


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May 26
 

Over and over, people try to design systems that make tomorrow's work easy. But when tomorrow comes it turns out they didn't quite understand tomorrow's work, and they actually made it harder.

~ Ward Cunningham ~

 


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May 27


 


This is a test. Take notes. This will count as 3/4 of your final grade. Hints: remember, in chess, kings cancel each other out and cannot occupy adjacent squares, are therefore all-powerful and totally powerless, cannot affect each other, produce stalemate. Hinduism is a polytheistic religion; the sect of Atman worships the divine spark of life within Man; in effect saying, "Thou art God." Provisos of equal time are not served by one viewpoint having media access to two hundred million people in prime time while opposing viewpoints are provided with a soapbox on the corner. Not everyone tells the truth.

~ Harlan Ellison ~
in
"The Deathbird"

 


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May 28
 

What I am interested in is the relationship between the blundering human being and God. I belong to no church, but I have a religious faith; it's an attempt to express that, among other things, that I try to do. Whether he confesses to being religious or not, everyone has a religious faith of a kind. I myself am a blundering human being with a belief in God who made us and we got out of hand, a kind of Frankenstein monster. Everyone can make mistakes, including God. I believe God does intervene; I think there is a Divine Power, a Creator, who has an influence on human beings if they are willing to be open to him.

~ Patrick White ~

 


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May 29
 

Religious and philosophical beliefs are, indeed, as dangerous as fire, and nothing can take from them that beauty of danger. But there is only one way of really guarding ourselves against the excessive danger of them, and that is to be steeped in philosophy and soaked in religion.

~ G. K. Chesterton ~

 


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May 30
 

No one can want to destroy without having some idea, true or false, of the order of things that should, according to him or her, replace what presently exists.

~ Mikhail Bakunin ~

 


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May 31
 

It is time to explain myself — let us stand up.
What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.
The clock indicates the moment — but what does eternity indicate?
~ Walt Whitman ~
in
Song of Myself

 


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QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

Today is Tuesday, March 19, 2024; it is now 07:14 (UTC)