March 22 Quotations

Quotes of the day from previous years:

2004

Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. ~ Martin Luther King

selected by Kalki

2005

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? ~ Marcel Marceau (born 22 March 1923)

selected by Kalki

2006

As I understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. ~ Anne Hutchinson (banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 22 March 1638)

selected by Kalki

2007

Man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish. ~ Marcel Marceau

proposed by Kalki

2008

Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music. ~ Marcel Marceau

selected by Kalki

2009

I buoyed me on the wings of dream,
Above the world of sense;
I set my thought to sound the scheme,
And fathom the Immense;
I tuned my spirit as a lute
To catch wind-music wandering mute.

Yet came there never voice nor sign;
But through my being stole
Sense of a Universe divine,
And knowledge of a soul
Perfected in the joy of things,
The star, the flower, the bird that sings.

Nor I am more, nor less, than these;
All are one brotherhood;
I and all creatures, plants, and trees,
The living limbs of God;
And in an hour, as this, divine,
I feel the vast pulse throb in mine.
~ Francis William Bourdillon ~

proposed by Kalki

2010

Suggestions

If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true. ~ Anne Hutchinson

3 Kalki 12:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC) with a strong lean toward 4.
1 Zarbon 04:25, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment. ~ Marcel Marceau

2 because tragedy isn't easily explained. The expression of "sad clown", hence crying inside, laughing outside, best signifies this persona, beautifully painted. Zarbon 05:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
3 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man. ~ Marcel Marceau

3 because anyone can hold a conversation, but to understand through movement is grandiose. Personally, the way in which dolphins are able to communicate, similarly, and moreso amazingly through a telepathic manner, if you will, has always been interesting to me. Zarbon 05:24, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
3 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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I find nothing more depressing than optimism. ~ Paul Fussell

3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
2 the crucial distinction to be made always involves the question "Optimism about what?"

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Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment. ... The explorer seeks the undiscovered, the traveler that which has been discovered by the mind working in history, the tourist that which has been discovered by entrepreneurship and prepared for him by the arts of mass publicity. ... If the explorer moves toward the risks of the formless and the unknown, the tourist moves toward the security of pure cliché. It is between these two poles that the traveler mediates. ~ Paul Fussell

2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach. Inside every good travel writer there is a pedagogue — often a highly moral pedagogue — struggling to get out. ~ Paul Fussell

2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, ... for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it. ~ Paul Fussell

2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it. ~ Paul Fussell

2 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. ~ Paul Fussell

3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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Time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them. ~ Edward Moore

4 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
3 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) but only if expanded for more context:

'Tis now the summer of your youth; time has not cropt the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them. Then use your beauty wisely; and, freed by injuries, fly from the cruellest of men, for shelter with the kindest.

3 for the expanded version. InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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Time still, as he flies, brings increase to her truth,
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.
~ Edward Moore

3 Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC) but perhaps a 3 with more context:

What tho' on her cheeks the rose loses its hue,
 Her wit and her humour bloom all the year thro';
Time still, as he flies, adds increase to her truth,
And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth.

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The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
~ Francis William Bourdillon

3 and lean toward 4. Zarbon 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
3 Kalki 17:47, 21 March 2009 (UTC) ~~4 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)~~ with a lean toward 4, but prefer lines from "The Chantry of the Cherubim" below.
3 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires,—
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
~ Thomas Carew

2 Zarbon 00:49, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
2 Kalki 13:09, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
2 InvisibleSun 21:53, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

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