March 31, 2014

Good Morning!

Today is the birthday of René Descartes (1596 – 1650) who said:

“Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)”

and

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”

and

“Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.”

It is also the birthday of Andrew Marvell (1621 – 1678) who wrote:

“Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime

We would sit down and think which way

To walk and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side

Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the Flood,”

Happy Birthday to Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) who said:

“There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”

and

“If I decide to be an idiot, then I’ll be an idiot on my own accord.”

Birthday greetings to Nikolai Gogol (1809 – 1852) who said:

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”

and

“However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.”

and

“But youth has a future. The closer he came to graduation, the more his heart beat. He said to himself: “This is still not life, this is only the preparation for life.”

And to Octavio Paz (1914 – 1998) who said:

“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”

and

“I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.”

Today is the birthday of John Fowles (1926 – 2005) who said:

“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”

and

“We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”

It is also the birthday of Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993) who said:

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore."

and

“You are never strong enough that you don't need help.”

and

“Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak... Non-violence is hard work.”

Happy Birthday to Marge Piercy (1936 - ) who said:

“A strong woman is a woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is a woman who loves strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling; she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she enacts it as the wind fills a sail.”

and

“There is no justice we don't make daily like bread and love.”

Finally, birthday greetings to Al Gore (1948 - ) who said:

“In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important - and often more profitable - than to be civil or creative or truly original.”