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Archives - August 2003

August 1, 2003

Every human being on this earth is born with a tragedy, and it isn't original sin. He's born with the tragedy that he has to grow up. That he has to leave the nest, the security, and go out to do battle. He has to lose everything that is lovely and fight for a new loveliness of his own making, and it's a tragedy. A lot of people don't have the courage to do it.

– Helen Hayes, Roy Newquist's SHOWCASE, 1966

August 2, 2003

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.

– Christopher Morley, INWARD HO

August 3, 2003

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.

– George E. Woodberry

August 4, 2003

The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.

– Robert J. Shiller, IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE

August 5, 2003

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

– George Washington

August 6, 2003

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

– G. K. Chesterton

August 7, 2003

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.

– Roger Rosenblatt, THE MAN IN THE WATER, 1994

August 8, 2003

Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.

– Frank Herbert

August 9, 2003

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

August 10, 2003

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

– Mark Twain

August 11, 2003

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

– Epictetus, DISCOURSES

August 12, 2003

Attempt easy tasks as if they were difficult, and difficult as if they were easy; in the one case that confidence may not fall asleep, in the other that it may not be dismayed.

– Baltasar Gracian

August 13, 2003

It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.

– Philip Adams

August 14, 2003

If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?

– Laurence J. Peter

August 15, 2003

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

August 16, 2003

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.

– Martin Luther

August 17, 2003

Books had instant replay long before televised sports.

– Bern Williams

August 18, 2003

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.

– Charles Brower

August 19, 2003

There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.

– Tom Robbins

August 20, 2003

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

– Oscar Wilde

August 21, 2003

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

– Samuel Butler

August 22, 2003

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

– James Branch Cabell, THE SILVER STALLION, 1926

August 23, 2003

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

– Carl Jung

August 24, 2003

To be nobody-but-yourself --- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else --- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

– E.E. Cummings

August 25, 2003

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

– Mahatma Gandhi

August 26, 2003

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

– Ronald Reagan

August 27, 2003

This art of resting the mind and the power of dismissing from it all care and worry is probably one of the secrets of energy in our great men.

– Captain J. A. Hadfield

August 28, 2003

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

– Kin Hubbard

August 29, 2003

Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.

– William Penn

August 30, 2003

You're never too old to become younger.

– Mae West

August 31, 2003

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

– Sir Winston Churchill