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December 22

From Wikiquote

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend
That doth but the best that he may,
Forgetting old wrongs with carols and songs
To drive the cold winter away.
~ "All Hail to The Days" (or "The Praise of Christmas") ~
Traditional 17th century English carol
2005
My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. ~ George Eliot (died 22 December 1880)
2006
It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence. ~ Kenneth Rexroth
2007
The holiness of the real
Is always there, accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulate
In you, the experiencer,
And in the other, the lover.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2008
While you live … you have a duty to life. … The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. … Otherwise they fade away. ~ Charles de Lint
2009
That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you. ~ Charles de Lint
2010
God is not, as in scholasticism, the final subject of all predicates. He is being as unpredicable. The existence of the creature, in so far as it exists, is the existence of God, and the creature’s experience of God is therefore in the final analysis equally unpredicable. Neither can even be described; both can only be indicated. We can only point at reality, our own or God’s. The soul comes to the realization of God by knowledge, not as in the older Christian mysticism by love. Love is the garment of knowledge. The soul first trains itself by systematic unknowing until at last it confronts the only reality, the only knowledge, God manifest in itself. The soul can say nothing about this experience in the sense of defining it. It can only reveal it to others. ~ Kenneth Rexroth
2011
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged. ~ Charles de Lint
2012
When all's said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it's not so much which road you take, as how you take it.
~ Charles de Lint ~
2013
For one heart beat the
Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
I who am lost and damned with words,
Whose words are a business and an art,
I have no words. These words, this poem, this
Is all confusion and ignorance.
But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
My heart beat one free beat and sent
Through all my flesh the blood of truth.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2014
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.
~ George Eliot ~
2015
An equation has no meaning for me unless it expresses a thought of GOD.
~ Srinivasa Ramanujan ~
2016
It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer. It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.
~ Charles de Lint ~
2017
I think each of us knows his own mystery with a knowing that precedes the origins of all knowledge. None of us ever gives it away. No one can. We envelop it with talk and hide it with deeds.
Yet we always hope that somehow the others will know it is there, that a mystery in the other we cannot know will respond to a mystery in the self we cannot understand. The only full satisfaction life offers us is this sense of communion. We seek it constantly. Sometimes we find it. As we grow older we learn that it is never complete and sometimes it is entirely illusory.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2018
Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2019
I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. My poems are acts of force and violence directed against the evil which murders us all.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2020
As concentration and depersonalization increase in the dominant society, as the concentration of capital increases with the takeover of ever larger businesses by conglomerates and international corporations, as more and more local initiative is abandoned to the rule of the central State, and as computerization and automation narrow the role of human initiative in both labor and administration, life becomes ever more unreal, aimless, and empty of meaning for all but a tiny elite who still cling to the illusion they possess initiative. Action and reaction — thesis and antithesis — this state of affairs produces its opposite. All over the world we are witnessing an instinctive revolt against dehumanization.
~ Kenneth Rexroth ~
2021
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man’s critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character.
~ George Eliot ~
2022
This battle is not only for the territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.
It will define whether it will be a democracy of Ukrainians and for Americans — for all.
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
  • proposed by Kalki; recent remarks on major events.
2023
Each solstice shows us that we can choose. We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the Universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to Life when each arrives.
~ Gary Zukav ~
  • proposed by Kalki; in regard of this solstice date of 2023, as reckoned by UTC.
2024
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
~ George Eliot ~
2025
Rank or add further suggestions…

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An averaging of the rankings provided to each suggestion produces it’s general ranking in considerations for selection of Quote of the Day. The selections made are usually chosen from the top ranked options existing on the page, but the provision of highly ranked late additions, especially in regard to special events (most commonly in regard to the deaths of famous people, or other major social or physical occurrences), always remain an option for final selections.
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Suggestions

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When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news. If they aren't, that's news too. ~ Kenneth Rexroth (born December 22, 1905)

Perhaps this is what really happens in life to most good men. They are not crucified. They simply pass through life and then die, and their passing influences just a few people to make them just a little happy. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Marriage is the last sacrament available to modern man, and with the terrible destruction of interpersonal relations by capitalism and its war-making State, it is not very available, nor is it surely enduring. But then, vision does not come with guarantees. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

  • 3 InvisibleSun 21:00, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 2. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 21:05, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 20:13, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear.
You build it altars tall enough
To make you see, but you are blind;
You cannot leave it long enough
To look before you or behind.
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson

  • 2 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Are we no greater than the noise we make
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go
Because our brains and bones and cartilage
Will have it so?
~ Edwin Arlington Robinson

  • 2 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

My only hope lies in my despair. ~ Jean Racine

  • 2 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale. ~ Charles de Lint

  • 3 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

If you're not ready to die, then how can you live? ~ Charles de Lint

  • 2 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy. ~ Charles de Lint

  • 4 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC) might give this a 3 eventually
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known? ~ Charles de Lint

Life's like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning. ~ Charles de Lint

  • 2 Zarbon 05:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that's important, but what its followers do with what they learn... ~ Charles de Lint

  • 3 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
  • 3 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 14:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 bystander (talk) 17:34, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The song shall spread and swell as rivers do,
And I will teach our youth with skill to woo
This living lyre, to know its secret will;
Its fine division of the good and ill.
So shall men call me sire of harmony,
And where great Song is, there my life shall be.
~ George Eliot ~

  • 3 Kalki 17:13, 21 December 2008 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
  • 2 InvisibleSun 20:30, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 14:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Hydrangeans (talk) 21:56, 11 December 2024 (UTC)

You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America. … You can’t become a saint by taking dope, stealing your friends’ typewriters, giving girls chancres, not supporting your wife and children, and then reading St. John of the Cross. All of that, when it’s happened before, has typified the collapse of civilization … and today the social fabric is falling apart so fast, it makes your head swim. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Any talented decadent can make unreality believable. To make reality convincing is another matter, a matter for only the greatest masters. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

“I am that I am” — the God of Judaism is the only self-sufficient being. All the reality that we can know is contingent, created out of nothing, and hence of an inferior order of reality. Faced with the “utterly other,” the contingent soul can finally only respond with fear and trembling. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

It [1729] is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways.1729 = 1³3 + 12³3 = 9³3 + 10³3.~ Srinivasa Ramanujan


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