Wednesday, April 23, 2014

April 23, 2014

Good Morning! 



Today is the birthday of Halldór Laxness (1902 – 1998) who said:
“Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes.”

and
“Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.”





It is also the birthday of J.P. Donleavy (1926 - ) who said:
“When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

and
“Writing: Turning one's worst moments into profit.”




Happy Birthday to Arthur Phillips (1969 - ) who said:
“Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There's always SOMETHING after happily ever after.”




Finally, it is the birthday of John Oliver (1977 - ) who said:

“The world's become so horrifying now. It's too easy to become cynical about things and that's not fair and it doesn't work. And in fact, there is hope for the world. And it is in the form of Wikipedia. Now Wikipedia will save us all. I found this out when recently a friend of mine emailed me and he said that someone had created a Wikipedia entry about me. I didn't realize this was true, so I looked it up. And like most Wikipedia entries, it came with some flamboyant surprises, not least amongst them my name. Because in it it said my name was John Cornelius Oliver. Now my middle name is not Cornelius because I did not die in 1752. But obviously, I wanted to be. Cornelius is an incredible name. And that's when it hit me --the way the world is now, fiction has become more attractive than fact. That is why Wikipedia is such a vital resource. It's a way of us completely rewriting our history to give our children and our children's children a much better history to grow up with. We seem to have no intention of providing them with a future. Let's at least give them a past. It is in a very real sense the least we can do.”


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