Wikiquote:Quote of the day/September 2013

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Today is Sunday, March 15, 2026; it is now 20:32 (UTC)

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September 1

Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying — but when God talks to us, we're said to be schizophrenic?

~ Jane Wagner for Lily Tomlin ~

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September 2

I care nothing for creeds. I am not concerned with any one's religious belief. But I would have men think for themselves. If we do not, we can only abandon one superstition to take up another, and it may be a worse one. It is as bad for a man to think that he can know nothing as to think he knows all.

~ Henry George ~

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September 3

How strange it seems that education, in practice, so often means suppression: that instead of leading the mind outward to the light of day it crowds things in upon it that darken and weary it. Yet evidently the true object of education, now as ever, is to develop the capabilities of the head and of the heart.

~ Louis Sullivan ~

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September 4

Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.

~ Ivan Illich ~

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September 5

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

~ John Danforth ~

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September 6

Your spiritual teachers caution you against enquiry — tell you not to read certain books; not to listen to certain people; to beware of profane learning; to submit your reason, and to receive their doctrines for truths. Such advice renders them suspicious counsellors. By their own creed you hold your reason from their God. Go! ask them why he gave it.

~ Frances Wright ~

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September 7

Brass shines as fair to the ignorant as gold to the goldsmiths.

~ Elizabeth I of England ~

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September 8

I like to watch.

~ Peter Sellers as "Chance" ~
in
~ Being There ~

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September 9

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

~ Leo Tolstoy ~

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September 10

Between too early and too late, there is never more than a moment.

~ Franz Werfel ~

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September 11

The magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos. I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human soul, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family. There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters.

~ D. H. Lawrence ~

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September 12

It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it's close.

~ Jesse Owens ~

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September 13

You will have to know life … If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words … It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it’s time to be living. I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.

~ Sherwood Anderson ~

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September 14

The old phrase, "Government of the people, by the people, for the people", represents a true ideal. It is best for the people as a whole. It is even more clearly the best for the development of the individual man and woman. And since in the end, the character and the prosperity of the nation depend on the character of the individuals that compose it, the form of government which best promotes individual development is the best for the people as a whole.

~ Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood ~

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September 15

Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs, equally to the honest man and to the gentleman: to the first, as doing to others as we would ourselves be done by; to the last, as indispensable to the liberality of the character.
By candor we are not to understand trifling and uncalled for expositions of truth; but a sentiment that proves a conviction of the necessity of speaking truth, when speaking at all; a contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions; and a deep conviction that he who deceives by necessary implication, deceives willfully.
In all the general concerns, the publick has a right to be treated with candor. Without this manly and truly republican quality, republican because no power exists in the country to intimidate any from its exhibition, the institutions are converted into a stupendous fraud.

~ James Fenimore Cooper ~

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September 16

Carol, every violet has
Heaven for a looking-glass!

Every little valley lies
Under many-clouded skies;
Every little cottage stands
Girt about with boundless lands;
Every little glimmering pond
Claims the mighty shores beyond;
Shores no seaman ever hailed,
Seas no ship has ever sailed.

All the shores when day is done
Fade into the setting sun,
So the story tries to teach
More than can be told in speech.

~ Alfred Noyes ~

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September 17

What I always wanted to be was a magician… Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it.

~ Ken Kesey ~

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September 18

The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not a succession of bright days that go on forever.

~ William March ~

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September 19

Fifteen men on the dead man's chest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest —
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

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September 20

After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It's better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

~ Sophia Loren ~

☥

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September 21

If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle to come.

~ Leonard Cohen ~

[File:Coa Illustration Cross Of St Catherine.svg|44px]]

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September 22

Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.

~ Michael Faraday ~

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September 23

Soul is when you take a song and make it a part of you — a part that's so true, so real, people think it must have happened to you. … It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, do we? But it's a force that can light a room. Soul is like electricity, like a spirit, a drive, a power.

~ Ray Charles ~

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September 24

Either you think — or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald ~

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September 25

I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

~ Glenn Gould ~

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September 26

If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

~ T. S. Eliot ~

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September 27

It requires time to bring honest Men to think & determine alike even in important Matters. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

~ Samuel Adams ~

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September 28

義

He who attains to sincerity is he who chooses what is good, and firmly holds it fast. To this attainment there are requisite the extensive study of what is good, accurate inquiry about it, careful reflection on it, the clear discrimination of it, and the earnest practice of it.

~ Confucius ~

儒家

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September 29

Time ripens all things. No man is born wise.

~ Miguel de Cervantes ~

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September 30

Love said to me,
there is nothing that is not me.

Be silent.

~ Rumi ~

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Today is Sunday, March 15, 2026; it is now 20:32 (UTC)