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Thought-of-the-Day
May 2005 Archive

Previous Archives

DATE THOUGHT OF THE DAY
05/01/05"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." - H.L. Mencken
05/02/05"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning." - Louis L'Amou
05/03/05"Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity." - Lao-tzu
05/04/05"Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us." - Henri Matisse
05/05/05"The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all." - Pablo Casals
05/06/05"Only a mediocre person is always at his best." - W. Somerset Maugham
05/07/05"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson
05/08/05"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
05/09/05"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!" - Soren Kierkegaard
05/10/05"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Bessie Stanley
05/11/05"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Friedrich Nietzsche
05/12/05"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work." - Aristotle
05/13/05"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." - Tom Stoppard
05/14/05"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." - Albert Camus
05/15/05"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." - Horace Mann
05/16/05"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." - Albert Schweitzer
05/17/05"Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant." - Robert Louis Stevenson
05/18/05"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right." - Sir Laurens van der Post
05/19/05"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." - E. B. White
05/20/05"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress." - Nicholas Murray Butler from Commencement Addresses (ed. 1951)
05/21/05"The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance." - Eric Hoffer
05/22/05"What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism." - Pauline Kael
05/23/05"A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them." - John Stuart Mill
05/24/05"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." - Erich Fromm
05/25/05"It is the weakness and danger of republics that the vices as well as virtues of the people are represented in their legislation." - Helen Hunt Jackson
05/26/05"The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.... To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober." - Logan Pearsall Smith
05/27/05"The most original authors are not so because they advance what is new, but because they put what they have to say as if it had never been said before." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
05/28/05"The earthly paradise is where I am." - Voltaire
05/29/05"I have always suspected that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a boon to people who don't have deep feelings; their pleasure comes from what they know about things, and their pride from showing off what they know. But this only emphasizes the difference between the artist and the scholar." - Margaret Anderson
05/30/05"A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." - Joseph Campbell from The Power of Myth
05/31/05"You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world." - Sir Walter Besant


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