Today's Words of Wisdom - August 24, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

Howard Zinn (1922 – 2010):

“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

and

“History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it.”

and

“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Robert Herrick (1591 – 1674):

“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.”

Max Beerbohm (1872 – 1956):

“For people who like that kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like.”

Jean Rhys (1890 – 1979):

“Today I must be very careful, today I have left my armor at home.”

and

“All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. And then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”

Malcolm Cowley (1898 – 1989):

“Going back to Hemingway's work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.”

and

“Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899 – 1986):

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

and

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

and

“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”

A.S. Byatt (1936 - ):

“What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.”

Paolo Coelho (1947 - ):

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

and

“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”

Stephen Fry (1957 - ):

“If you know someone who’s depressed, please resolve never to ask them why. Depression isn’t a straightforward response to a bad situation; depression just is, like the weather.

Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness, and loneliness they’re going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s depressed, but it is one of the kindest, noblest, and best things you will ever do.”

and

“The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.”

Dana Gould (1964 - ):

“Competition is the death of art.”

John Green (1977 - ):

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

and

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”

and

“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”

and

“Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's very beautiful over there'. I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”

and

“Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.”