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May 9

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Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004
All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her. ~ George Washington (Mother's Day 2004)
2005
Life is a long lesson in humility. ~ J. M. Barrie (born 9 May 1860)
2006
The time for the healing of the wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us. ~ Nelson Mandela (inaugurated as President of the Republic of South Africa, 9 May 1994)
2007
Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did. ~ Sophie Scholl of the White Rose
2008
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves. ~ J. M. Barrie (born 9 May 1860)
2009
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. ~ J. M. Barrie
2010
It is not enough that we have a guilty defendant. We must have an innocent system as well. - John Ashcroft
2011
It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children. ~ J. M. Barrie
2012
Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove.
All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world. ~ José Ortega y Gasset
2013
When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.
~ J. M. Barrie ~
2014
Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2015
Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2016
We can know America through our flag which is its symbol … In our flag the barriers of time and space vanish. All America that ever was and ever will be lives every moment in our flag. Wherever in the world two or three of us stand together under our flag, all America is there. When we stand proudly and salute our flag, that is what we know wordlessly in the passing moment. … Understand that our flag is not the cloth but the pattern of form and color manifested in the cloth … It could have been any pattern once, but our fathers chose that one. History has made it sacred. The honor paid it in uncounted acts of individual reverence has made it live. Every morning in American schoolrooms children present their hearts to our flag. Every morning and evening we render it our military salutes. And so the pattern lives and it can manifest itself in any number of bits of perishable cloth, but the pattern is indestructible.
~ Richard McKenna ~
2017
It is said there will be no more war. We must pretend to believe that. But when war comes, it is we who will take the first shock and buy time with our lives. It is we who keep the faith.
~ Richard McKenna ~
2018
Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive. In periods of consolidation, nationalism has a positive value, and is a lofty standard. But in Europe everything is more than consolidated, and nationalism is nothing but a mania, a pretext to escape from the necessity of inventing something new, some great enterprise.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2019
Life today is the fruit of an interregnum, of an empty space between two organizations of historical rule — that which was, that which is to be. For this reason it is essentially provisional.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2020
No one knows toward what center human things are going to gravitate in the near future, and hence the life of the world has become scandalously provisional. Everything that today is done in public and in private — even in one's inner conscience — is provisional, the only exception being certain portions of certain sciences. He will be a wise man who puts no trust in all that is proclaimed, upheld, essayed, and lauded at the present day. All that will disappear as quickly as it came. All of it, from the mania for physical sports (the mania, not the sports themselves) to political violence; from "new art" to sun-baths at idiotic fashionable watering-places. Nothing of all that has any roots; it is all pure invention, in the bad sense of the word, which makes it equivalent to fickle caprice. It is not a creation based on the solid substratum of life; it is not a genuine impulse or need. In a word, from the point of view of life it is false.
We are in presence of the contradiction of a style of living which cultivates sincerity and is at the same time a fraud. There is truth only in an existence which feels its acts as irrevocably necessary.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2021
The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.
~ José Ortega y Gasset ~
2022
Russia has forgotten everything that was important to the victors of World War II. But Ukraine and the whole free world will remind it.
So that then no one will forget. So that really important words — "never again" — which are repeated all over the free world every year on the days of remembrance of the victims of World War II regain their weight again.
I am grateful to all our defenders who are defending and saving Ukraine from the modern descendants of that old evil.
Eternal glory to all our heroes! Eternal glory to all our warriors!
I am grateful to all the friends of Ukraine and freedom!
Glory to Ukraine!
~ Volodymyr Zelenskyy ~
2023
We never understand how little we need in this world until we know the loss of it.
~ J. M. Barrie ~
2024
The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
~ Alan Bennett ~
in
~ The History Boys ~
2025
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Suggestions

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Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation. ~ Joe Biden

Power is what spoils people. Yes, it seems to me that the seeking after power is the great danger and the great corruptor of mankind. ~ Baldur von Schirach (born May 9)

  • 3 and lean toward a 4, because power can corrupt anyone. Zarbon 04:49, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 06:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 1 Aphaia 08:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 17:16, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What we do we do not merely with our hands and brains, but with our hearts and souls. This has often become a tragic fate for us. ~ Baldur von Schirach (born May 9)

Standards always are out of date. That is what makes them standards. ~ Alan Bennett (born May 9, 1934)

I am fully persuaded that I am worth inconceivably more to hang than any other purpose. ~ John Brown (born May 9, 1800)

  • 3 InvisibleSun 06:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Aphaia 08:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 3 Zarbon 12:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

I'm convinced that faith is a matter of inspiration, not a matter of imposition. It is something a person models rather than mandates. Faith does not impose itself on other people. Imposition usually sacrifices somebody else; it seeks to injure or extort others. ~ John Ashcroft

  • 3 Zarbon 02:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 InvisibleSun 22:58, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
  • 3 Kalki 09:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.

Through it all, I've learned to trust that God does indeed have a plan and purpose for me. Trust doesn't come into play when you can figure everything out; that's mere reason. Trust operates when you can't understand why circumstances or events happen. That's where it takes faith to believe that God knows what is best for our lives. ~ John Ashcroft

  • 3 Zarbon 02:38, 7 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:58, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

This day had been a nightmare, and I had not yet been asleep. ~ John Ashcroft

Doing what is right in the face of adversity is not always easy or popular. Critics may assail you, but the critics don't always realize what they don't know or don't understand, because they don't have access to all the information. ~ John Ashcroft

  • 3 Zarbon 20:15, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 InvisibleSun 22:58, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
  • 2 Kalki 09:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 3.

Wise children always choose a mother who was a shocking flirt in her maiden days, and so had several offers before she accepted their fortunate papa. ~ J. M. Barrie

What is your name?’
‘Peter Pan.’
She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a comparatively short name.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes,’ he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it was a shortish name.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Wendy Moira Angela.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Peter gulped.
She asked where he lived.
‘Second to the right,’ said Peter, ‘and then straight on till morning.’
‘What a funny address!’
Peter had a sinking feeling. For the first time he felt that perhaps it was a funny address. ~ J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan

The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last. A tremor ran through him, like a shudder passing over the sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will be an awfully big adventure." ~ J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan ~

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it. The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings. ~ J. M. Barrie

"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't let Tink die."
Many clapped.
Some didn't.
A few beasts hissed.
The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening; but already Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed, then she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever. She never thought of thanking those who believed, but she would have like to get at the ones who had hissed. ~ J. M. Barrie in Peter Pan ~

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." ~ José Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses

  • 3 N6n 09:50, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
  • 2 ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 20:26, 1 May 2012 (UTC) with a lean toward 3 or an eventual 4 — there are many others by Ortega y Gasset and J. M. Barrie which I generally prefer.

The State is always, whatever be its form — primitive, ancient, medieval, modern — an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common. That enterprise, be its intermediate processes what they may, consists in the long run in the organisation of a certain type of common life. ~ José Ortega y Gasset

The common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes that it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly-endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.… These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child. ~ José Ortega y Gasset

In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else. ~ José Ortega y Gasset

Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life. ~ José Ortega y Gasset

Life is fired at us point blank. ~ José Ortega y Gasset

Man’s being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it. ~ José Ortega y Gasset

I take you for what you are, and all that you are, and mix you with all of me, and I don't hold back nothing. Nothing! When you're cold, and hungry, and afraid, so am I. When you're happy, so am I. I'm going to stay with you all that I can, take the very best care of you that I can, and love you every minute until I die.
~ Richard McKenna ~


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