March 18, 2014

Good Morning!

Today is the birthday of Grover Cleveland (1837 -1908) who said:

“Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.”

and

“I feel as if it were time for me to write to someone who will believe what I write.”

and

“Whatever you do, tell the truth.”

and

“I have tried so hard to do the right.”

It is also the birthday of Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 – 1898) who said:

“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.”

and

“It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.”

and

“It is in front of the paper that the artist creates himself.”

and

“I have made a long enough descent into the void to speak with certainty. There is nothing but beauty--and beauty has only one perfect expression, Poetry. All the rest is a lie.”

Happy Birthday to Neville Chamberlain (1869 – 1940) who said:

“In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.”

Birthday greetings to poet Wilfred Owen (1893 – 1918) who wrote:

“The old Lie:Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

(It is sweet and right to die for your country)”

and

“All a poet can do today is warn.”

Today is the birthday of civil rights activist Fred Shuttlesworth (1922 – 2011) who said:

“We wanted confrontation, nonviolent confrontation, to see if it would work… Not just for Birmingham – for the nation.  We were trying to launch a systematic wholehearted battle against segregation, which would set the pace for the nation.”

It is also the birthday of George Plimpton (1927 – 2003) who said:

“I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.”

Finally, a very happy birthday to John Updike (1932 – 2009) who said:

“Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.”

and

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”

and

“The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.”