Wikiquote:Quote of the day/May 2025

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

Today is Monday, June 16, 2025; it is now 04:19 (UTC)

Purge page cache

May 1

Catch-22, says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

~ Joseph Heller ~
in
~ Catch-22 ~

view - discussion - history

May 2

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.

~ Jerome K. Jerome ~

view - discussion - history

May 3

Friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.

~ Niccolò Machiavelli ~

view - discussion - history

May 4

Lost — Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

~ Horace Mann ~

view - discussion - history

May 5

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God — blessed is he who takes no offense at me.

~ Søren Kierkegaard ~
in
~ The Sickness Unto Death ~

view - discussion - history

May 6

There's a light that is shining in the heart of a man,
it's the light that was shining when the world began.
There's a light that is shining in the Turk and the Jew
and a light that is shining, friend, in me and in you.

~ Sydney Carter ~

view - discussion - history

May 7

Come, O Creator Spirit blest!
And in our souls take up Thy rest;
Come, with Thy grace and heav'nly aid,
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made.

Great Paraclete! to Thee we cry:
O highest gift of God most high!
O fount of life! O fire of love!
And sweet Anointing from above!

~ Rabanus Maurus ~

view - discussion - history

May 8

God bless you all. This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In our long history, we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.

~ Winston Churchill ~

view - discussion - history

May 9

Peace be with you all!
Dear brothers and sisters, this is the first greeting of the risen Christ, the good shepherd who gave his life for the flock of God. I too would like this greeting of peace to enter your heart, to reach your families, to all people, wherever they are, to all peoples, to all the earth. Peace be with you!

~ Pope Leo XIV ~

view - discussion - history

May 10

Whatever court we are in, whatever we are doing, whether we are in a trial court or an appellate court, at the end of our task some human being is going to be affected. Some human life is going to be changed in some way by what we do, whether we do it as trial judges or whether we do it as appellate judges, as far removed from the trial arena as it is possible to be. And so we had better use every power of our minds and our hearts and our beings to get those rulings right.

~ David Souter ~

view - discussion - history

May 11

He who is on the Path exists not for himself, but for others; he has forgotten himself, in order that he may serve them. He is as a pen in the hand of God, through which His thought may flow, and find for itself an expression down here, which without a pen it could not have. Yet at the same time he is also a living plume of fire, raying out upon the world the Divine Love which fills his heart.
The wisdom which enables you to help, the will which directs the wisdom, the love which inspires the will — these are your qualifications. Will, Wisdom and Love are the three aspects of the Logos; and you, who wish to enroll yourselves to serve Him, must show forth these aspects in the world.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti ~

view - discussion - history

May 12

Law is the continuous manifestation of God's presence — not reason for believing him absent.
Great confusion arises from our using the same word law in two totally distinct senses … as the cause and the effect. It is said that to "explain away" everything by law is to enable us to do without God.
But law is no explanation of anything; law is simply a generalization, a category of facts. Law is neither a cause, nor a reason, nor a power, nor a coercive force. It is nothing but a general formula, a statistical table. Law brings us continually back to God instead of carrying us away from him.

~ Florence Nightingale ~

view - discussion - history

May 13

I saw full surely that where our Lord appeareth, peace is taken and wrath hath no place. For I saw no manner of wrath in God, neither for short time nor for long; — for in sooth, as to my sight, if God might be wroth for an instant, we should never have life nor place nor being.

~ Julian of Norwich ~

view - discussion - history

May 14

The will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will, believe what has been, is, or may be impressed on his mind by his predecessors, and the circumstances which surround him.

~ Robert Owen ~

view - discussion - history

May 15

You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.

~ Katherine Anne Porter ~

view - discussion - history

May 16

We hold no arbitrary authority over anything, whether lawfully acquired or seized by usurpation. The constitution regulates our stewardship; the constitution devotes the domain to union, to justice, to defense, to welfare and to liberty.
But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.

~ William H. Seward ~

view - discussion - history

May 17

Child, child, do you not see? For each of us comes a time when we must be more than what we are.

~ Lloyd Alexander ~

view - discussion - history

May 18

If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon. But Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed. You cannot, therefore, get away from envy by means of success alone, for there will always be in history or legend some person even more successful than you are. You can get away from envy by enjoying the pleasures that come your way, by doing the work that you have to do, and by avoiding comparisons with those whom you imagine, perhaps quite falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself.

~ Bertrand Russell ~
in
~ The Conquest of Happiness ~

view - discussion - history

May 19

Just sit a while and think. Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

~ Lorraine Hansberry ~

view - discussion - history

May 20

My goal in life is to make people think. If I do that, I've been a success.

~ Charles A. Reich ~

view - discussion - history

May 21

Oh, happiness! Our being’s end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate’er thy name:
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O’erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign’st to grow?
…
Where grows? — where grows it not? If vain our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere,
’Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere;
’Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.

~ Alexander Pope ~
in
~ An Essay on Man ~

view - discussion - history

May 22

Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. But soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise.
After that day, at the bottom of each breath, there is a hollow place that is filled with longing. We become seekers without knowing what we seek.

~ Peter Matthiessen ~

view - discussion - history

May 23

Who will save your souls?
After all those lies that you told, boy
Now, who will save your souls?
If you won't save your own?

~ Jewel ~

view - discussion - history

May 24

He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick ~

view - discussion - history

May 25

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

~ Theodore Roethke ~

view - discussion - history

May 26

Art is not science. Even when art is about science, it is still art. There cannot be consensus, in the sense that science strives for meaningful consensus. And unlike science, art is not progressive. Personally, I have my doubts that science can be said to be genuinely progressive, but I'm pretty dammed certain that art is not. Which is not to say that it is not accumulative or accretionary. But the belief that sf writers are out there forecasting the future, that they have some social responsibility to do so, that's malarky, if you ask me.

~ Caitlín R. Kiernan ~

view - discussion - history

May 27

The old masters are perfect and admirable examples, on condition that we remember that the spirit gives life and the letter kills, and that even the best pastiche is inferior to the harmonious stammering or incoherence of a child trying to speak.

~ Georges Rouault ~

view - discussion - history

May 28

It has been nearly seventy years since the Sovereign first opened Parliament. In the time since, Canada has dramatically changed: repatriating its Constitution, achieving full independence, and witnessing immense growth. Canada has embraced its British, French, and Indigenous roots, and become a bold, ambitious, innovative country that is bilingual, truly multicultural, and committed to reconciliation.
The Crown has for so long been a symbol of unity for Canada. It also represents stability and continuity from the past to the present. As it should, it stands proudly as a symbol of Canada today, in all her richness and dynamism.

~ Charles III ~

view - discussion - history

May 29

To further the appreciation of culture among all the people, to increase respect for the creative individual, to widen participation by all the processes and fulfillments of art — this is one of the fascinating challenges of these days.

~ John F. Kennedy ~

view - discussion - history

May 30

If there is a devil in human history, that devil is the principle of command. It alone, sustained by the ignorance and stupidity of the masses, without which it could not exist, is the source of all the catastrophes, all the crimes, and all the infamies of history.

~ Mikhail Bakunin ~

view - discussion - history

May 31

By success, of course, I do not mean that you may become rich, famous, or powerful for that does not, of necessity, represent achievement. Indeed, not infrequently, such individuals represent pathetic failure as persons. By success I mean the development of mature and constructive personality.
Through the application of the principle of constructive thinking you can attain your worthy goals.

~ Norman Vincent Peale ~

view - discussion - history

QOTD by month + Suggestions for: January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
<– Last Month · This Month –>

Today is Monday, June 16, 2025; it is now 04:19 (UTC)