Quotes of the day from previous years:

2003
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. ~ Edsger Dijkstra
  • selected by Nanobug
2004
Your strength is but an accident arising from the weakness of others. ~ Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
  • selected by Kalki
2005
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. ~ Mohandas Gandhi
  • proposed by Jeffq
2006
Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread... ~ Conrad Aiken (born 5 August 1889)
  • proposed by Kalki
2007
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. ~ Guy de Maupassant (born 5 August 1850)
  • proposed by Kalki
2008
Those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (recent death)
  • proposed by Kalki
2009
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
~ Wendell Berry ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2010
'Tis true, my form is something odd
but blaming me, is blaming God,
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.
~ Joseph Merrick ~ (born 5 August 1862)
  • proposed by Kalki
2011
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. ~ Wendell Berry
  • proposed by Kalki
2012
I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire.
~ Wendell Berry ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2013

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

~ Wendell Berry ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2014
If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.
~ Wendell Berry ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2015
A small but brilliant advance made today by someone’s awareness may for the moment reach a very small audience, but insofar as it’s valid and beautiful, it will make its way and become part of the whole world of consciousness.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2016
I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It’s simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2017
We rub the darkness from our eyes,
And face our thousand devious secret mornings …
And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending,
Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer
Compassionate over our towers bending.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2018
I have said repeatedly that as poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry’s office.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2019
I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • proposed by Kalki
2020 
Rank or add further suggestions…

Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD:

  • Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. ~ Wendell Berry
  • If I could reach from pole to pole
    or grasp the ocean with a span,
    I would be measured by the soul
    The mind's the standard of the Man.
    ~ Isaac Watts ~
    (poem often used by Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", who was born this day)

Ranking system:

4 : Excellent - should definitely be used.
3 : Very Good - strong desire to see it used.
2 : Good - some desire to see it used.
1 : Acceptable - but with no particular desire to see it used.
0 : Not acceptable - not appropriate for use as a quote of the day.

Suggestions

Blond hair and breasts, that's how I got started. I couldn't act. All I had was blond hair and a body men liked. The reason I got ahead is that I was lucky and met the right men. ~ Marilyn Monroe, found dead in her apartment that day

  • 3 ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:36, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 ~ Jeff Q (talk) 13:31, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 ~ Kalki 21:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 1 Zarbon 15:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 10:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Separate we come, and separate we go, and this be it known, is all that we know. ~ Conrad Aiken (born 5 August 1889)

  • 3 Kalki 21:22, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • 2 Zarbon 15:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 ~ DanielTom (talk) 01:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
  • 1 //Gbern3 (talk) 10:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war. ~ Wendell Berry

  • 3 Kalki 14:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4
  • 3 //Gbern3 (talk) 10:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. ~ Neil Armstrong

  • 3 ~ DanielTom (talk) 01:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC) (or a variant); better to use this on July 21, otherwise it might be confusing to readers. ~ DanielTom (talk) 09:54, 27 July 2013 (UTC)
  • 2 //Gbern3 (talk) 10:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Each gleaming point of light is like a seed
Dilating swiftly to coiling fires.
Each cloud becomes a rapidly dimming face,
Each hurrying face records its strange desires.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!
I am dissolved and woven again...
Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
My veins are afire with music,
Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light;
I shall dream to her secret heart tonight...
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened.
Again I loved, and love itself was darkened.
Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days.
The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent.
The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music,
We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass;
A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble;
We tremble like wind-blown grass.
~ Conrad Aiken ~
  • 3 ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 11:35, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
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