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.”
