Wikiquote

July 24

day of the year

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer. ~ Will Rogers
2004
Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime. ~ Andrew Marvell
2005
Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. ~ John Newton, in "Amazing Grace"
2006
There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the long ninth wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild.
But nothing promised that is not performed.
~ Robert Graves ~
2007
New beginnings and new shoots
Spring again from hidden roots
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Love must ever yet return.
~ Robert Graves ~
2008
Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it, and with this I begin and end. ~ John Newton
2009
The art of victory is learned in defeat. ~ Simón Bolívar
2010
The three greatest fools of History have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote . . . and me! ~ Simón Bolívar
2011
God give us men. The time demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.
~ Josiah Gilbert Holland ~
2012
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav'd a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
~ John Newton ~
2013
No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.
~ Amelia Earhart ~
2014
When a dream is born in you
With a sudden clamorous pain,
When you know the dream is true
And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch
You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
~ Robert Graves ~
2015
The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.
~ Amelia Earhart ~
2016
Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servo-mechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate.
~ John D. MacDonald ~
2017
Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will. Integrity is not a search for the rewards of integrity. Maybe all you ever get for it is the largest kick in the ass the world can provide. It is not supposed to be a productive asset. Crime pays a lot better. I can bend my own rules way, way over, but there is a place where I finally stop bending them.
~ John D. MacDonald ~
2018
In many ways life is less random than we think. In your past and mine, there have been times when we have, on some lonely trail, constructed a device aimed into our future. Perhaps nothing ever comes along to trigger it. We live through the safe years. But, for some people, something moves on the half-forgotten path, and something arches out of the past and explodes in the here and now.
~ John D. MacDonald ~
2019
War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.
~ Robert Graves ~
2020
I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.
~ John D. MacDonald ~
2021
We're all children. We invent the adult facade and don it and try to keep the buttons and the medals polished. We're all trying to give such a good imitation of being an adult that the real adults in the world won't catch on. Each of us takes up the shticks that compose the adult image we seek. I'd gone the route of lazy, ironic bravado, of amiable, unaffiliated insouciance. Tinhorn knights of a stumbling Rocinante from Rent-A-Steed, maybe with one little area of the heart so pinched, so parched, I never dared let anything really lasting happen to me. Or dared admit the the flaw...
The adult you pretend to be convinces himself that the risk is worth the game, the game worth the risk. Tells himself the choice of life style could get him killed — on the Daytona track, in the bull ring, falling from the raw steel framework forty stories up, catching a rodeo hoof in the side of the head.
Adult pretenses are never a perfect fit for the child underneath, and when there is the presentiment of death, like a hard black light making panther eyes glow in the back of the cave, the cry is, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, it's so dark out there, so dark and so forever."
~ John D. MacDonald ~
2022

Be warm, enjoy the season, lift your head,
Exquisite in the pulse of tainted blood,
That shivering glory not to be despised.

Take your delight in momentariness,
Walk between dark and dark — a shining space
With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.

~ Robert Graves ~
2023
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies,
And we mount to its summit round by round.
~ Josiah Gilbert Holland ~
2024
Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
~ John D. MacDonald ~
2025
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What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it? ~ O. Henry, released from prison that day.

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:48, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 17:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC) But more inclined to use it on O. Henry's birthdate.
  • 2 --Coyote 23:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 06:39, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 13:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

How will I ever get out of this labyrinth? ~ Simón Bolívar (born July 24)

  • 3 Zarbon 17:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: Art and Anger: Essays on Politics and the Imagination - Page 55 by Ilan Stavans - Political Science - 2001
  • 2 Kalki 23:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 13:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If Nature is against us, we shall fight Nature, and make it obey. ~ Simón Bolívar (born July 24)

  • 3 because this is a pure depiction of using mighty nature in comparison to any obstacle. Power can be won over anything. Zarbon 17:25, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • SOURCE: Birth of a World: Bolivar in Terms of His Peoples - Page 55 by Waldo David Frank - 1951
  • 2 Kalki 23:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 13:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Sleeping on a plank has one advantage — it encourages early rising. ~ Alexandre Dumas

  • 2 Zarbon 19:35, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 23:49, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 13:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

The heart is wiser than the intellect. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

The moment we recognize God as supreme in power and infinitely good and loving toward all His intelligent creatures, that moment we admit the doctrine of universal and special providence. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

What do you think God gave you more wealth than is requisite to satisfy your rational wants for, when you look around and see how many are in absolute need of that which you do not need? Can you not take the hint? ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

Open your hands, ye Whose hands are full! The world is waiting for you! The whole machinery of the Divine beneficence is clogged by your hard hearts and rigid fingers. Give and spend, and be sure that God will send; for only in giving and spending do you fulfill the object of His sending. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward. ~ Amelia Earhart

Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he'll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he's going to see.
~ John D. MacDonald ~
Way over half the murders committed in this country are by close friends or relatives of the deceased. A gun makes a loud and satisfying noise in a moment of passion and requires no agility and very little strength. How many murders wouldn't happen, if they all had to use hammers and knives?
~ John D. MacDonald ~


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