Quote of the Day -- Walt Whitman

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour.

-- Walt Whitman

Quote of the Day -- Ann Patchett

Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

-- Ann Patchett

Quote of the Day -- William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.

-- William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Quote of the Day -- John Weiss

 It’s tempting to complain. We all end up experiencing health challenges and the slow march of physical deterioration. But telling everyone else about it only amplifies your misery. Focus on the positive, and gratitude for the good things in your life.

-- John Weiss

Quote of the Day -- Charles Dickens

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.

-- Charles Dickens

Quote of the Day -- Richard Hamming

Teachers should prepare the student for the student's future, not for the teacher's past.

-- Richard Hamming

Quote of the Day -- Anne Bradstreet

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

-- Anne Bradstreet

Quote of the Day -- Thomas Merton

There is another side of Kanchenjunga and of every mountain—the side that has never been photographed and turned into postcards. That is the only side worth seeing.

-- Thomas Merton

Quote of the Day -- Iris Murdoch

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

-- Iris Murdoch

Quote of the Day -- Marie Curie

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

-- Marie Curie

Quote of the Day -- Paulline Phillips (Dear Abby)

The best index to a person’s character is (a) how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can’t fight back.

-- Pauline Phillips (Dear Abby)

Quote of the Day -- George Washington

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

-- George Washington

Quote of the Day -- Friedrich Nietzsche

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Quote of the Day -- Francois Fenelon

The more you say, the less people remember.

-- Francois Fenelon

Quote of the Day -- John Gardner

There's a myth that learning is for young people. But as the proverb says, 'It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.' The middle years are great, great learning years. Even the years past the middle years. I took on a new job after my 77th birthday – and I'm still learning. Learn all your life. Learn from your failures. Learn from your successes, When you hit a spell of trouble, ask 'What is it trying to teach me?' The lessons aren't always happy ones, but they keep coming.

-- John Gardner

Quote of the Day -- Marguerite Yourcenar

Everything turns out to be valuable that one does for one’s self without thought of profit.

-- Marguerite Yourcenar

Quote of the Day -- Anne O'Hare McCormick

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

-- Anne O'Hare McCormick

Quote of the Day -- Thomas Donahue

The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.

-- Thomas Donahue

Quote of the Day -- Henry David Thoreau

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Quote of the Day -- Bertrand Russell

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

-- Bertrand Russell

Quote of the Day -- Eleanor Roosevelt

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Quote of the Day -- Goethe

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

-- Goethe

Quote of the Day -- William Faulkner

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.

-- William Faulkner

Quote of the Day -- Dawn Drzal

I realized I was as happy as I’d ever been in my life. It was the happiness of the right-before, when everything is potential and no branch on the tree of possibility has yet been closed off by action.

-- Dawn Drzal

Quote of the Day -- Melody Beattie

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  

-- Melody Beattie

Quote of the Day -- Margaret Mitchell

Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.

-- Margaret Mitchell

Quote of the Day -- George Patton

If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

 -- George Patton

Quote of the Day - Immanuel Kant

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but of how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

-- Immanuel Kant

Quote of the Day -- Joyce Carol Oates

Why some things—a word, a glance, a scene glimpsed from a window, a random memory, a fragrance, a conversational anecdote, a fragment of music, or of a dream—have the power to stimulate us to intense creativity while most others do not, we are unable to say.

-- Joyce Carol Oates

Quote of the Day -- Natalie Goldberg

In order to improve your writing, you have to practice just like any other sport. But don't be dutiful and make it into a blind routine. "Yes, I have written an hour today and I wrote an hour yesterday and an hour the day before." Don't just put in your time. That is not enough. You have to make great effort. Be willing to put your whole life on the line when you sit down for writing practice. Otherwise you are just mechanically pushing the pen across the page and intermittently looking at the clock to see if your time is up. 

Some people hear the rule "Write every day" and do it and don't improve. They are just being dutiful. That is the way of the Goody Two-shoes. It is a waste of energy because it takes tremendous effort to just follow the rules if your heart isn't into it. If you find that this is your basic attitude, then stop writing. Stay away from it for a week or a year. Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak. Then come back.

-- Natalie Goldberg

Quote of the Day -- Oscar Wilde

But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.

-- Oscar Wilde

Quote of the Day -- Zora Neale Hurston

No matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you.

--  Zora Neale Hurston

Quote of the Day -- Cathy Hopkins

Don’t wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.

- Cathy Hopkins

Quote of the Day -- Isaac Asimov

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

-- Isaac Asimov

Quote of the Day -- Greta Thunberg

I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.

-- Greta Thunberg

Quote of the Day -- John Ruskin

No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.

-- John Ruskin

Quote of the Day -- Barack Obama

America as an experiment is genuinely important to the world not because of the accidents of history that made us the most powerful nation on Earth, but because America is the first real experiment in building a large multiethnic, multicultural democracy. And we don't know yet if that can hold.

-- Barack Obama

Quote of the Day -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

 -Jiddu Krishnamurti

Quote of the Day -- Euripides

Those who the wise consider fools are often better tuned to speak before a crowd.

-- Euripides

Quote of the Day -- Seth Godin

People who have trouble coming up with good ideas, if they're telling you the truth, will tell you they don't have very many bad ideas. But people who have plenty of good ideas, if they're telling the truth, will say they have even more bad ideas. So the goal isn't to get good ideas; the goal is to get bad ideas. Because once you get enough bad ideas, then some good ones have to show up.

-- Seth Godin

Quote of the Day -- Albert Einstein

Those who believe that politics and religion do not mix, understand neither.

-- Albert Einstein

Quote of the Day -- Alex Trebek

The secret to happiness, of course, is not getting what you want. It’s wanting what you get. 

- Alex Trebek, RIP 11/08/20

Quote of the Day -- Robert Ardrey

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles and irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties, whatever they may be worth; our symphonies, however seldom they may be played; our peace­ful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams, however rarely they may be accom­plished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.

--Robert Ardrey

Quote of the Day -- Abraham Lincoln

Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. 

-- Abraham Lincoln

Quote of the Day -- James Clear

The trick to writing well is to... 

- take long sentences and make them short

- take confusing ideas and make them clear 

- take unrelated concepts and make them related

...without losing the main idea in the process.

-- James Clear

Quote of the Day -- Leo Tolstoy

There is only one time that is important— Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.

-- Leo Tolstoy

Quote of the Day -- David Foster Wallace

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.

-- David Foster Wallace

Quote of the Day -- Barbara Kingsolver

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. 

― Barbara Kingsolver

Quote of the Day -- Maya Angelou

We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends and living our lives.

-- Maya Angelou

Quote of the Day -- Harry Truman

It’s not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It’s the hand that casts the ballot.

-- Harry Truman