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1. "It is — or seems to be — a wise sort of thing, to realise that all that happens to a man in this life is only by way of joke, especially his misfortunes, if he have them. And it is also worth bearing in mind, that the joke is passed round pretty liberally & impartially, so that not very many are entitled to fancy that they in particular are getting the worst of it." ~ Herman Melville, Letter to Samuel Savage (24 Aug 1851)
2. "True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a chance of measuring up to the standard." ~ Irving Babbitt
3. "If I did not believe that our work was done in the faith and hope that at some day, it may be a million years hence, the Kingdom of God will spread over the whole world, I would have no hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it." ~ Stanley Baldwin
4. "If a person's religious ideas correspond not with your own, love him nevertheless. How different would yours have been, had the chance of birth placed you in Tartary or India!"
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
5. "If I did not believe that our work was done in the faith and hope that at some day, it may be a million years hence, the Kingdom of God will spread over the whole world, I would have no hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it." ~ Stanley Baldwin
6. "Good God, what a brute man becomes when ignorant and oppressed. Oh Liberty! What horrors are committed in thy name! May every virtuous revolutionist remember the horrors of Wexford!" ~ Daniel O'Connell
7. "We never can have a true view of man unless we have a love for him. Civilisation must be judged and prized, not by the amount of power it has developed, but by how much it has evolved and given expression to, by its laws and institutions, the love of humanity." ~ Rabindranath Tagore
8. "A man who governs his passions is master of his world. We must either command them or be enslaved by them. It is better to be the hammer than the anvil." ~ St. Dominic de Guzman
9. "Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own;
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today."
~ John Dryden, Imitation of Horace (1685)
10. "About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends."
~ Herbert Hoover, Quoted in obituaries (20 Oct 1964)
11. "The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future." ~ Gifford Pinchot
12. "You are old, Father William the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember’d that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first,
That I never might need them at last.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And pleasures with youth pass away;
And yet you lament not the days that are gone,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember’d that youth could not last;
I thought of the future, whatever I did,
That I never might grieve for the past.
You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death,
Now tell me the reason, I pray.
I am cheerful, young man, Father William replied,
Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remember’d my God!
And He hath not forgotten my age."
~ Robert Southey, 'The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them' (1799)
13. "It is not quite the same when we are seventy-two as when we are twenty-seven; still I am glad of what is left, and wish we might both hold out till the victory we have sought is won, but all the same the victory is coming. In the aftertime the world will be the better for it." ~ Lucy Stone, Letter to Susan B. Anthony (1891)
14. "It isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving."
~ John Galsworthy, 'A Bit O' Love' (1915)
"Do not let us mistake necessary evils for good."
~ C.S. Lewis, 'The Weight of Glory'
15. "True love's the gift which God has given
To man alone beneath the heaven:
It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, soon as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind
In body and in soul can bind."
~ Sir Walter Scott, 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Canto V, stanza 13 (1805)
"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung."
~ Sir Walter Scott, 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' Canto VI, stanza 1 (1805)
~ Sir Walter Scott, 'The Talisman,' Ch. 24 (1825)
16. "I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind." ~ John Diefenbaker, 1 Jul 1960
17. "I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me, or the driver at my heels, with his whip in hand, commanding me to ge-wo-haw, just at his pleasure. Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!" ~ David Crockett (1834)
18. "When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of Hell. That is why we dread children, even if we love them. They show us the state of our decay." ~ Brian Aldiss, 1977
19. "A feeling heart is a blessing that no one, who has it, would be without; and it is a moral security of innocence; since the heart that is able to partake of the distress of another, cannot wilfully give it." ~ Samuel Richardson (1754)
20. "The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." ~ Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, 20 August 1940 [75 years ago today]
21. "You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working ; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves." ~ Saint Francis de Sales
22. "People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better." ~ Ray Bradbury
23. "You must pursue facts for their own sake, but penetrated with a vivid sense of the problems of your own time. This is not a principle of perversion, but a principle of selection. You must have some principle of selection, and you could not have a better one than to pay special attention to the history of the social problems which are agitating the world now, for you may be sure that they are problems not of temporary but of lasting importance." ~ Arnold Toynbee, 'Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England' (1884)
24. "There is what I call the American idea. I so name it, because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all our truly original, distinctive, and American institutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed of three subordinate and more simple ideas, namely: The idea that all men have unalienable rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created equal; and that government is to be established and sustained for the purpose of giving every man an opportunity for the enjoyment and development of all these unalienable rights. This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom." ~ Theodore Parker, 'The American Idea,' a speech at New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston (29 May 1850)
25. "The agricultural population, says Cato, produces the bravest men, the most valiant soldiers, and a class of citizens the least given of all to evil designs." ~ Pliny the Elder (b. AD 23; d. 25 Aug AD 79), "Naturalis Historia," Book XVIII, sec. 26
26. "As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free." ~ Benjamin Bradlee, Letter dated May 30, 1973
27. "In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored. If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe. For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves." ~ Lyndon Baines Johnson, Inaugural Address (20 January 1965)
28. "When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1780
29. "False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera." ~ John Locke (1689)
30. "Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place be afforded: it can give form to dark shapeless substances but cannot bring into being the substance itself." ~ Mary Shelley, Introduction to the 1831 edition of
Frankenstein
31. "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." ~ Arthur Godfrey
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