Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

The way to know life is to love many things


As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult,
but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed


If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well,
one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things


The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore


The more I think about it, the more I realize
there is nothing more artistic that to love others


When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion.
Then I go out and paint the stars


For my part I know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of the stars makes me dream


Vincent van Gogh
Dutch artist (Irises)
(Born this day 1853)



I wish they would only take me as I am

[Tamrin]

Money does not make you happy but it quiets the nerves


It's my rule never to lose me temper till it would be detrimental to keep it


All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed


You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an
idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you
cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build


Laughter is wine for the soul-laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through
with seriousness. The hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living


Disease can never be conquered, can never be quelled by emotion's wilful screaming or
faith's symbolic prayer. It can only be conquered by the energy of humanity and the
cunning in the mind of man. In the patience of a Curie, in the enlightenment of a Faraday, a
Rutherford, a Pasteur, a Nightingale, and all other apostles of light and cleanliness, rather than
of a woebegone godliness, we shall find final deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine


Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity


Sean O'Casey, Irish dramatist
(Born this day 1880)



I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and
I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other

[Tamrin]

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!


We have always resented the natural inclination of most white people to demand
spirituals the moment it is known that a Negro is about to sing. So often the
request has seemed to savor of the feeling that we could do this and this alone


There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something
indefinable which we call the "breaks." In order for a writer to succeed,
I suggest three things — read and write — and wait


The play is done, the crowds depart; and see that twisted tortured
thing hung from a tree, swart victim of a newer Calvary


So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
and wait, and tend our agonizing seeds


For we must be one thing or the other, an asset or a liability,
the sinew in your wing to help you soar, or the chain to bind you to earth


The key to all strange things is in thy heart....
My spirit has come home, that sailed the doubtful seas


Countee Cullen
US poet (Ballad of the Brown Girl)
(Born this day 1903)



If I am going to be a poet at all, I am going to be POET and not NEGRO POET

[Tamrin]

To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being;
to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world


A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community
finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living


Love extends beyond the bounds of family to all human beings
and is changed into vivifying, creative, transmuting power


What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has
completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era


Our highest endeavour must be to develop free human beings who
are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives


You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does
not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher


Reverence, enthusiasm, and a sense of guardianship, these three are actually
the panacea, the magical remedy, in the soul of the educator and teacher


Bro. Rudolf Steiner
Austrian philosopher (Anthroposophy)
(Died this day 1925)



Receive the children in reverence;
educate them in love;
let them go forth in freedom

[Tamrin]

1 of 3:

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good


Interdependence is and ought to be as much the
ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being


A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than
a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble


Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress


Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain
his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position


What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea


A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes


Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi
(Died this day 1948)



Be the change that you want to see in the world

[Tamrin]

2 of 3:

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs
and does not help to solve them is no religion


Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the
exclusive possession of no one race or religion


All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects,
unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth


I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.
Your Christians are so unlike your Christ


I reject any religious doctrine that does not
appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality


Nearly everything you do is of no importance,
but it is important that you do it


Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality


Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi
(Died this day 1948)



My life is my message

[Tamrin]

3 of 3:

Poverty is the worst form of violence


There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed


First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win


Let us all be brave enough to die the death of
a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom


My religion is based on truth and non-violence.
Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him


I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and
Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is
to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could


I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill


Mohandas K. “Mahatma” Gandhi
(Died this day 1948)



Nobody can hurt me without my permission

[Tamrin]

People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back


As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American
vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later


A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn't particularly feel like it


All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running some-
thing less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by
then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they
look on the man as a sinner and a bumble and begin to poke around for rumors of another Messiah


Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence


Curiosity ... endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their
own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will


Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men


Alistair Cooke, KBE
British-American journalist and broadcaster (Letter from America)
(Died this day 2004)



In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against
nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly, that it put off enjoy-
ing those things for which we were designed in the 1^st place: the opportunity to
do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

Monday’s Quotes:

1 of 2:

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks
he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all
other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have


I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error


I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine
the same things that lunatics imagine when awake


The senses deceive from time to time, and it is prudent
never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once


One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible
that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another


When it is not in our power to follow what is true,
we ought to follow what is most probable


If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that
at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things


René Descartes
French-Dutch philosopher ( Principia Philosophiae
(Born this day 1596)



Cogito ergo sum
(“I think therefore I am”)