Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance,
were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance


To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup,
whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up


Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for


Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave
when they think that their children are naive


There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all


The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin


Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never
remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets


Ogden Nash, American poet
(Born this day 1902)



Too clever is dumb

[Tamrin]

The strength of a civilization is not measured by its ability
to fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent them


If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differ-
ences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas
and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear


It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive
to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not
reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward


I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of
rational decision, to drain people of their free will — and a hell of a lot of money
in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For
most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain


Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow —
it's not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race
is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient
astronauts did not build the pyramids — human beings built them, because
they're clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things


We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God,
who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes


Matter of internal security — the age-old cry of the oppressor


Gene Roddenberry
US author, producer (Star Trek)
(Born this day 1921)



A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on
and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away

[Tamrin]

There were positive things about the church, that is, in the European
cultural sense, the architecture, the liturgy, the music, the art, such
as it was, the stations of the cross in the church, the tradition, and
the atmosphere of awe and mystery in the mass. The atmosphere
of miracle, one of mainly mystery, that's what fascinates me


I had to get rid of any idea of hell or any idea of the afterlife.
That's what held me, kept me down. So now I just have
nothing but contempt for the institution of the church


The poverty and the influence of the church were very damaging.
It damaged all of us emotionally. To be poor deprives you of self-esteem


I admire certain priests and nuns who go off on their own and do
God's work on their own, who help in the ghettos, but as far as
the institution of the church is concerned, I think it is despicable


And, of course, they've always condemned dancing. You know,
you might touch a member of the opposite sex. And you might
get excited and you might do something natural


Before the famine, which was in the 1840s, that was an emotional
turning point... There are various documents showing how the
Elizabethan English, in particular, were shocked by Irish displays of
affection, by the way women acted toward strangers, walking up and
putting their arms around them and kissing them right full on the mouth


You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my
advanced age, when you're staring into the grave


Frank McCourt
Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author
(Born this day 1930)



There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd

[Tamrin]

Big things are expected of us, and nothing big ever came of being small


By lifting the weakest, poorest among us, we lift the rest of us as well


The new rage is to say that the government is the cause of all our
problems, and if only we had no government, we'd have no problems.
I can tell you, that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense


Let me say this as clearly as I can: No matter how sharp a grievance
or how deep a hurt, there is no justification for killing innocents


Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on Sept. 11.
Osama bin Laden did, and as far as we know he's still alive
[true then]


Our paradigm now seems to be: Something terrible happened
to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret
all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must
agree with us. And if they don't, they can go straight to hell


Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference


Bill Clinton
42nd US President, (Former Little Rock Attorney)
(Born this day 1946)



Everybody counts, everybody deserves a chance,
everybody has a responsible role to play
and we all do better when we work together

[Smithee]

Smithee's pick of the day.

Aug 19, 2012 8:36:08 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us

John Dryden
(Born this day 1631)

[Tamrin]

Quotes for the Day:

The best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds


I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should
walk with me than merely tell the way: The eye's a better pupil and more
willing than the ear, fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear


You are the person who has to decide. Whether you'll do it
or toss it aside; You are the person who makes up your mind.
Whether you'll lead or will linger behind. Whether you'll try for
the goal that's afar. Or just be contented to stay where you are


You ought to be true for the sake of the folks who think you are
true. You never should stoop to a deed that your folks think you
would not do. If you are false to yourself, be the blemish but small,
you have injured your folks; you have been false to them all


There is an education of the mind which all require and parents only start.
But there is training of a nobler kind and that's the education of the heart.
Lessons that are most difficult to give are Faith and Courage and the way to live


But here in the struggle for fame and pelf I want to be able to like myself.
I don't want to look at myself and know that I'm bluster and buff and empty show


I want to be able, as days go by, always to look myself straight in the eye


Edgar A. Guest, American poet
(Born this day 1881)



With a lift of his chin, and a bit of a grin, without any doubting or "quit it,"
he started to sing, as he tackled the thing that couldn't be done, and he did it

[Tamrin]

The character of human life, like the character of the human condition,
like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil,
the true and false, the creative and destructive forces - both individual and social


Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence
and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt


Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being


Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone.
It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone.
And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone


I hope for the day when everyone can speak again of God without embarrassment


"You are accepted!" ... accepted by that which is greater than you
and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask the name now,
perhaps you will know it later. Do not try to do anything, perhaps later you will do much.
Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything.
Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.


Man is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become to fulfill his destiny

Paul Tillich
German philosophical theologian
(Born this day 1886)



Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith

[Tamrin]

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon
their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely
insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of
artificial backgrounds or practical consequences


Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for
strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee
of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity


I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any
subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine
information to make him really know what he's talking about


To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which
nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth


What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a
sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!


But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?


The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind


H.P. Lovecraft
US Gothic novelist (At the Mountains of Madness)
(Born this day 1890)



The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination

[Tamrin]

Everyone stands along on the heart of the earth
transfixed by a sun ray: and suddenly it is evening


The poet's spoken discourse often depends on a mystique,
on the spiritual freedom that finds itself enslaved on earth


War, I have always said, forces men to change their standards,
regardless of whether their country has won or lost


After the turbulence of death, moral principles
and even religious proofs are called into question


At the point when continuity was interrupted by the first nuclear explosion,
it would have been too easy to recover the formal sediment which linked
us with an age of poetic decorum, of a preoccupation with poetic sounds


Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be
interior and personal, but which the reader recognizes as his own


Religious power, which, as I have already said, frequently identifies itself with political power,
has always been a protagonist of this bitter struggle, even when it seemingly was neutral


Salvatore Quasimodo
Italian poet, critic and translator (Nobel 1959)
(Born this day 1901)

We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude

[Tamrin]

Go straight for souls, and go for the worst


But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men
whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad,
desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?


A man's labor is not only his capital but his life. When
it passes it returns never more. To utilize it, to
prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable the poor
man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is
one of the most urgent tasks before civilization


To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a
pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him
a University education. These things are all outside a man, and
if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labor.
You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature
a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine


There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you
can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue
is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is
to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that
stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued.
Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has
become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government,
and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of
permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large


While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while children go
hungry, as they do now I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out,
in and out, as they do now, I'll fight; while there is a drunkard left,
while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one
dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight, I'll fight to the very end!


Do something!


Gen. William Booth
English founder of The Salvation Army
(Died this day 1912)



It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to
wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want
of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages,
when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity
on the part of those who have had all the advantages?