Blathery

Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

Born this week

William C. Bryant,

November 3, 1794June 12, 1878

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty.

William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.

Andre Malraux,

November 3, 1901November 23, 1976

Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate.

André Malraux DSO was a French novelist, art theorist and Minister for Cultural Affairs. Malraux's novel La Condition Humaine won the Prix ...

Robert Mapplethorpe,

November 4, 1946March 9, 1989

To make pictures big is to make them more powerful.

Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his sometimes controversial large-scale, highly stylized black and white ...

James Montgomery,

November 4, 1771April 30, 1854

Fairest and best adorned is she Whose clothing is humility.

James Montgomery was a British poet, hymnwriter and editor. He was particularly associated with humanitarian causes such as the campaigns ...

George Edward Moore,

November 4, 1873October 24, 1958

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

George Edward "G. E." Moore OM, FBA was an English philosopher. He was, with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Gottlob Frege, one ...

Will Rogers,

November 4, 1879August 15, 1935

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.

William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He ...

Eugene V. Debs,

November 5, 1855October 20, 1926

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times ...

Will Durant,

November 5, 1885November 7, 1981

In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.

William James Durant was an American writer, historian, and philosopher. He is best known for The Story of Civilization, 11 volumes written ...

Vivien Leigh,

November 5, 1913July 8, 1967

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

Vivian Mary Hartley, later known as Vivien Leigh, was a British stage and film actress. She won two Best Actress Academy Awards for her ...

Roy Rogers,

November 5, 1911July 6, 1998

I'm an introvert at heart... And show business - even though I've loved it so much - has always been hard for me.

Roy Rogers was an actor and a singer.

George A. Sheehan,

November 5, 1918November 1, 1993

Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

George A. Sheehan was a physician and author best known for his writings about the sport of running. His book, "Running & Being: The Total ...

Ella Wheeler Wilcox,

November 5, 1850October 30, 1919

So many gods, so many creeds, so many paths that wind and wind while just the art of being kind is all the sad world needs.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. Her best-known work was Poems of Passion. Her most enduring work was "Solitude", which ...

Bob Barr,

November 5, 1948January 1, 1935

It is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that laws written in the 1970s are adequate for today's intelligence challenges.

Robert Laurence "Bob" Barr, Jr. is a former federal prosecutor and a former member of the United States House of Representatives. He ...

John Philip Sousa,

November 6, 1854March 6, 1932

Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music.

John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known primarily for American military and patriotic ...

Albert Camus,

November 7, 1913January 4, 1960

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Albert Camus was a French Nobel Prize winning author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy ...

Marie Curie,

November 7, 1867July 4, 1934

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. ...

Konrad Lorenz,

November 7, 1903February 27, 1989

It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ...

Leon Trotsky,

November 7, 1879August 21, 1940

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.

Leon Trotsky was a Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army. Trotsky ...

Dorothy Day,

November 8, 1897November 29, 1980

Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.

Dorothy Day, Obl.O.S.B. was an American journalist, social activist, and devout Catholic convert. She advocated the Catholic economic ...

Sarah Fielding,

November 8, 1710April 9, 1768

The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination.

Sarah Fielding was a British author and sister of the novelist Henry Fielding. She was the author of The Governess, or The Little Female ...

Margaret Mitchell,

November 8, 1900August 16, 1949

The world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business.

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was an American author and journalist. One novel by Mitchell was published during her lifetime, the American ...

Joseph Franklin Rutherford,

November 8, 1869January 8, 1942

Life everlasting in a state of happiness is the greatest desire of all men.

Joseph Franklin Rutherford, also known as "Judge" Rutherford, was the second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Bible and Tract ...

Spiro T. Agnew,

November 9, 1918September 17, 1996

A tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one, and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned and licensed by government.

Spiro Theodore Agnew was an American politician who served as the 39th Vice President of the United States from 1969 to 1973, serving under ...

Benjamin Banneker,

November 9, 1731October 9, 1806

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

Benjamin Banneker was a free African American scientist, surveyor, almanac author and farmer. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free ...

Richard Cecil,

November 8, 1748August 15, 1810

The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

Richard Cecil was a leading Evangelical Anglican clergyman of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Monica Edwards,

November 8, 1912January 18, 1998

We are in an electronic technology age now and it's about time we put away the old stuff.

Monica Edwards was an English children's writer of the mid-twentieth century best known for her Romney Marsh and Punchbowl Farm series of ...

Martha Gellhorn,

November 8, 1908February 15, 1998

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist, who is considered one of the greatest war correspondents of ...

Muhammad Iqbal,

November 9, 1877April 21, 1938

But inner experience is only one source of human knowledge.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal, widely known as Allama Iqbal, was a philosopher, poet and politician in British India who is widely regarded as having ...

Imre Lakatos,

November 9, 1922February 2, 1974

Research programmes, besides their negative heuristic, are also characterized by their positive heuristic.

Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its ...

Hedy Lamarr,

November 9, 1914January 19, 2000

Confidence is something you're born with. I know I had loads of it even at the age of 15.

Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. After an early film career in Germany, which culminated in her controversial ...

Carl Sagan,

November 9, 1934December 20, 1996

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.

Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science ...

James Schuyler,

November 9, 1923April 12, 1991

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

James Marcus Schuyler was an American poet whose awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1980 collection The Morning of the ...

Ivan Turgenev,

November 9, 1818September 3, 1883

Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew.

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection ...

Anne Sexton,

November 9, 1928October 4, 1974

Death's in the good-bye.

Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her ...