Wikiquote:Quote of the day/March 2009
- March 1
| From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. ~ Napoleon I of France ~ |
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- March 2
| In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. ~ Paul Harvey ~ |
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- March 3
| If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind. ~ William Godwin ~ |
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- March 4
| When I listen to love, I am listening to my true nature. When I express love, I am expressing my true nature. All of us love. All of us do it more and more perfectly. The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming. I plant the seeds of love in my heart. I plant the seeds of love in the hearts of others. ~ Julia Cameron ~ |
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- March 5
| The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man. ~ William Beveridge ~ |
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- March 6
| Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the Watchmen? ~ Juvenal ~ |
- March 7
| Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do. ~ Thomas Aquinas ~ |
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- March 8
| We no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don't know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives. ~ Neil Postman ~ |
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- March 9
| A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All knowledge is transient, linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal, immutable. ~ Shashi Tharoor ~ |
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- March 10
| In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still, In men whom men pronounce divine I find so much of sin and blot, I do not dare to draw a line Between the two, where God has not. ~ Joaquin Miller ~ |
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- March 11
| All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others. ~ Douglas Adams ~ |
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- March 12
| Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth and the bosom of the deep with endless successions of life and happiness. ~ William Buckland ~ |
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- March 13
| The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. ~ Mircea Eliade ~ |
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- March 14
| Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community. The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion. ~ Albert Einstein ~ |
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- March 15
| Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. ~ Andrew Jackson ~ |
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- March 16
| Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. |  |
- March 17
| Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known For lack of listeners are not said. ~ Jean Ingelow ~ |
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- March 18
| Candor is always a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate. ~ Wilhelm Stekel ~ |
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- March 19
| "Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame! |
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- March 20
| What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. |  |
- March 21
| The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive. ~ Hans Hofmann ~ |
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- March 22
| I buoyed me on the wings of dream, Above the world of sense; I set my thought to sound the scheme, And fathom the Immense; I tuned my spirit as a lute To catch wind-music wandering mute. Yet came there never voice nor sign; But through my being stole Sense of a Universe divine, And knowledge of a soul Perfected in the joy of things, The star, the flower, the bird that sings. Nor I am more, nor less, than these; All are one brotherhood; I and all creatures, plants, and trees, The living limbs of God; And in an hour, as this, divine, I feel the vast pulse throb in mine. ~ Francis William Bourdillon ~ |
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- March 23
| I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death." ~ Erich Fromm ~ |
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- March 24
| Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily... ~ Wilhelm Reich ~ |
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- March 25
| Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker ~ |
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- March 26
| I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~ Robert Frost ~ |
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- March 27
| There’s a good time coming, boys! A good time coming. We may not live to see the day, But earth shall glisten in the ray Of the good time coming. Cannon-balls may aid the truth But thought’s a weapon stronger; We’ll win our battles by its aid, Wait a little longer. ~ Charles Mackay ~ |
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- March 28
| I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? ... I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. ~ Teresa of Ávila ~ |
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- March 29
| On seeing his shadow fall on such ancient rocks, he had to question himself in a different context and ask the same old question as before, "Who am I?", and the answer now came more emphatically than ever before, "No-one." But a no-one with a crown of light about his head. He would remember a verse from Pindar: "Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet." ~ R. S. Thomas ~ |
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- March 30
| The best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. ~ Vincent van Gogh ~ |
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- March 31
| Cogito ergo sum I think, therefore I am. ~ René Descartes ~ |
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