Blathery

Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Born this week

Lyndon B. Johnson

August 27, 1908January 22, 1973

I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help - and God's.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States, a position he assumed after his service as ...

William Feather

August 25, 1889January 7, 1981

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

William A. Feather was an American publisher and author, based in Cleveland, Ohio. Born in Jamestown, New York, Feather relocated with his ...

Mother Teresa

August 26, 1910September 5, 1997

Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C., commonly known as Mother Teresa, was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister and missionary who lived most of ...

John Locke

August 29, 1632October 28, 1704

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

John Locke FRS, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and known as the ...

Charles Kettering

August 29, 1876November 25, 1958

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.

Charles Franklin Kettering was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and ...

Max Beerbohm

August 24, 1872May 20, 1956

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

Sir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.

Maurice Maeterlinck

August 29, 1862May 6, 1949

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.

Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was a Fleming, but wrote in French. He was ...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

August 27, 1770November 14, 1831

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, and a major figure in German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of ...

Jorge Luis Borges

August 24, 1899June 14, 1986

Life and death have been lacking in my life.

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges KBE, was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish ...

Leonard Bernstein

August 25, 1918October 14, 1990

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and ...

Ingrid Bergman

August 29, 1915August 29, 1982

I have grown up alone. I've taken care of myself. I worked, earned money and was independent at 18.

Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy ...

Theodore Dreiser

August 27, 1871December 28, 1945

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail.

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters ...

Robertson Davies

August 28, 1913December 2, 1995

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealised past.

William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of ...

Roger Tory Peterson

August 28, 1908July 28, 1996

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we'll soon be in trouble.

Roger Tory Peterson was an American naturalist, ornithologist, artist, and educator, and held to be one of the founding inspirations for ...

Theophile Gautier

August 30, 1811October 23, 1872

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While Gautier was an ...

Theodore Parker

August 24, 1810May 10, 1860

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Theodore Parker was an American Transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words ...

Bret Harte

August 25, 1836May 5, 1902

Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.

Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic ...

Johann Georg Hamann

August 27, 1730June 21, 1788

Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.

Johann Georg Hamann was a German philosopher, whose work was used by his student J. G. Herder as a main support of the Sturm und Drang ...

Man Ray

August 27, 1890November 18, 1976

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.

Man Ray was an American visual artist who spent most of his career in France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist ...

C. Wright Mills

August 28, 1916March 20, 1962

Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

Charles Wright Mills was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. ...