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| Quotations of the Day: December 2004 |
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December 31, 2004
Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is élan, esprit de corps and determination.
—George C. Marshall
December 30, 2004
I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
—Brendan Behan
December 29, 2004
Justice delayed is justice denied.
—William Ewart Gladstone
December 28, 2004
When I resist, therefore, when I as a Democrat resist the concentration of power, I am resisting the processes of death, because the concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human initiative, and, therefore of human energy.
—Woodrow Wilson
December 27, 2004
Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
December 26, 2004
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
—Isaiah 11:6
December 25, 2004
Welcome, all wonders in one night! / Eternity shut in a span, / Summer in winter, day in night, / Heaven in earth, and God in man. / Great Little One! Whose all-embracing birth / Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
—Richard Crashaw
December 24, 2004
In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit.
—Joan Didion
December 23, 2004
Self-revelation is a cruel process. The real picture, the real “you” never emerges. Looking for it is as bewildering as trying to know how you really look. Ten different mirrors show you ten different faces.
—Shashi Deshpande
December 22, 2004
Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!
—Samuel Beckett
December 21, 2004
There is no such thing as collective guilt.
—Kurt Waldheim
December 20, 2004
One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
—G.K. Chesterton
December 19, 2004
The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man … not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
—Jean Genet
December 18, 2004
I rise superior to my pain, / When I am weak then I am strong.
—Charles Wesley
December 17, 2004
Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend’s success without envy…. I well know that mirror of friendship, shadow of a shade.
—Aeschylus
December 16, 2004
We grant no dukedoms to the few, / We hold like rights and shall;— / Equal on Sunday in the pew, / On Monday in the mall. / For what avail the plough or sail, / Or land or life, if freedom fail?
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
December 15, 2004
The masses always end up wholeheartedly believing and following those individuals whom they themselves mock, individuals whom they curse and persecute, but individuals who, not fearing their curses or their persecution, continue steadily forward, having fastened a spiritual gaze on the only goal such individuals can see.
—Ivan Turgenev
December 14, 2004
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
—Proverbs 15:1
December 13, 2004
O little town of Bethlehem, / How still we see thee lie! / Above thy deep and dreamless sleep / The silent stars go by.
—Phillips Brooks
December 12, 2004
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.
—Joseph Heller
December 11, 2004
Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade.
—Solzhenitsyn
December 10, 2004
This is the Hour of Lead— / Remembered, if outlived, / As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow— / First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
—Emily Dickinson
December 9, 2004
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
—John Milton
December 8, 2004
Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.
—Maurice-Auguste Chevalier
December 7, 2004
We’re in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country.
—Ronald Reagan
December 6, 2004
If we give, we are made rich. If we forget ourselves, we find peace. If we forgive, we receive forgiveness. If we die, we receive eternal resurrection.
—Saint Francis
December 5, 2004
What are heavy? Sea-sand and sorrow; / What are brief? Today and tomorrow; / What are frail? Spring blossoms and youth; / What are deep? The ocean and truth.
—Christina Georgina Rossetti
December 4, 2004
Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold. / Dread fifty above more than fifty below.
—Robert Frost
December 3, 2004
The holiest of all holidays are those / Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; / The secret anniversaries of the heart.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
December 2, 2004
Shopping malls are liquid TVs for the end of the twentieth century. A whole micro-circuitry of desire, ideology and expenditure for processed bodies drifting through the cyber-space of ultracapitalism.
—Arthur Kroker
December 1, 2004
I’m not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying. Pain can be alleviated by morphine but the pain of social ostracism cannot be taken away.
—Derek Jarman
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