Daily Poem and Quotations

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Quotes for Today


Thought of the Day:
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Quote of the Day:
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Quote of the Moment:
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Poem of the Day


Bonus Poem:
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QUOTES OF THE DAY:
August is National Inventors' Month, set aside to celebrate those whose work has made our work and life better by coming up with new stuff. Ever since Plato's comment in the fourth century BC, wits have commented on what spawned the urge to invent.

Quotes:

Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
- Plato

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
- Agatha Christie, 1890 - 1976

Getting caught is the mother of invention.
- Robert Byrne

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.
- Roger von Oech
"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1861 - 1947

A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
- Carolyn Wells, 1862 - 1942

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Thought of the Day:
"Home is any four walls that enclose the right person."
--Helen Rowland, writer, journalist, humorist (1876-1950)

Quote of the Day:
"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-the-last mistake."
--Savielly Tartakower, Russian-born French chess grandmaster (1877-1956)

Quote of the Moment:
"The fact that an opinion has been wiely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."
--Bertrand Russell, British philosopher (1872-1970)

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Poem of the Day
"Letter from a Haunted Room" by Lisa Sewell

Dear K., there’s a mosquito stain
between the pages of your book, a streak
of platelets beside my index finger.
The broken microscopic cells have escaped
the hurly-burly of the wide aorta, the stark
unholy flow through veins and tubules.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mistake
anatomy for emotion. My heart is meat
and gristle, like Artaud’s: a simple
pump, it never falters. If I weep
it’s for the rocking chair, three knocks
embedded in the nursery wall.
On one window, I found instructions:
“Here, no cares invade, all sorrows
cease” in almost perfect iambs.
Forgive me. I tried to keep them
“far outside” but they marched right up
to my room. All month they’ve been waving
tenuous arms. Have you seen them?
What could I do but let them in
and let them rest in your favorite chair. Soon
they’ll disappear or I will. In the afternoons
(do you remember?) light falls
or spills, spills or falls through the amber
stained-glass windows. It lifts my spirits
but I’m still waiting for you to appear
at the edge of my bed with a message. Think
of the ruins I could have traveled to
by now, think of the days I’ve wasted
lying on the pink divan, a stand of hawthorns
blocking my view of the rose garden,
my American Beauty, already fully blown.

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Thought of the Day:
"Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me how to life."
--Alexander Herzen, Russian author (1812-1870)

Quote of the Day:
"Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it." --Anonymous.

Quote of the Moment:
"Achievement brings its own anticlimax."
--Dame Agatha Christie, mystery author (1890-1976)[/

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Poem of the Day
"In the Airport" by Eleni Sikelianos

A man called Dad walks by
then another one does. Dad, you say
and he turns, forever turning, forever
being called. Dad, he turns, and looks
at you, bewildered, his face a moving
wreck of skin, a gravity-bound question
mark, a fruit ripped in two, an animal
that can't escape the field.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

Alfred Hitchcock was born at London on August 13th in 1899. He left school at 14, working in a telegraph office until 1920 when he took a job designing title cards for Famous Players-Lasky. He took the chance to work at any other bit of filmmaking he could, and by 1927 directed his first film. He directed the first "talkie" in England before moving to Hollywood. Although he never won an Oscar for best director, his first US movie (Rebecca) won for best picture. He married his assistant, Alma Reville, in 1926, they worked, cooked, and stayed together until his death.

Quotes:
Cinema is life with the dull bits cut out.

There's nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville.

In feature films the director is God; in documentary films God is the director.

If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

Thought of the Day:
"Genius is the ability to act rightly without precedent--the power to do the right thing the first time."
--Elbert Hubbard, writer (1856-1915)

Quote of the Day:
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
--John Cage, composer (1912-1992)

Quote of the Moment:
"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
--Albert Schweitzer, medical humanitarian (1875-1965)

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]QUOTES OF THE DAY

Gold was discovered in Bonanza Creek near Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada on August 16th in 1896, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush. As with most such discoveries, great wealth was found. Not by miners, of course, but by those who sold them tents, shovels, and bacon. In fact it's likely that the city of Seattle became what it is based on money made equipping miners on their way to the gold fields. It motivated a lot of folks to chase after a glittering dream, the "city" wasn't much more than a dream either. Within two years the population was 40,000, by 1902 it was under 5,000, and now it's about 2,000.

Quotes:

When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.
- Barbara Bloom

That fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which, therefore, the true value cannot be assigned.
- Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784

Gold is tried by fire, brave men by adversity.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4 BC - AD 65

The man who treasures his friends is usually solid gold himself.
- Marjorie Holmes, 1910 - 2002

Tragedy is like strong acid: It dissolves away all but the very gold of truth.
- D. H. Lawrence, 1885 - 1930

If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.
- Fidel Castro

Thought of the Day:
"It is not love that is blind, but jealousy."
--Lawrence Durrell, English-born author (1912-1990)

Quote of the Day:
"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction."
--Gen. Douglas MacArthur, US Army (1880-1934)

Quote of the Moment:
"A mind once stretched by a new idea never regais its original dimension."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, US Supreme Court justice (1841-1935)

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QUOTES OF THE DAY:

On Aug 18th in 1883 Pope Leo XIII opened the Vatican archives to scholars outside the Roman Catholic church for the first time, revealing unique documents, artifacts, and great works of art that had been hidden from view for centuries. In his announcement he said, “The first law of history is not to dare to utter falsehood; the second is not to fear to speak the truth.”

Quotes on History:
The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.
- Isaac Asimov, 1920 - 1992

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture.
- Learned Hand, 1872 - 1961

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
- Walter Bagehot, 1826 - 1877

History warns us ... that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
- Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825 - 1895

To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
- David McCullough

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
- Aldous Huxley, 1894 - 1963

Quotes for Today:

Thought of the Day:
"Memory is more indelible than ink."
--Anita Loos, playwright (1888-1981)

Quote of the Day:
"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the for of inert facts."
--Henry (Brooks) Adams, author (1838-1918)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"A little of what you call frippery is very necessary towards looking like the rest of the world."
--Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams & 2nd first lady(1744-1818)

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Poem of the Day
"Ode to My Hands" by Tim Seibles

Five-legged pocket spiders, knuckled
starfish, grabbers of forks, why
do I forget that you love me:
your willingness to button my shirts,
tie my shoes—even scratch my head!
which throbs like a traffic jam, each thought
leaning on its horn. I see you

waiting anyplace always
at the ends of my arms—for the doctor,
for the movie to begin, for
freedom—so silent, such
patience! testing the world
with your bold myopia: faithful,
ready to reach out at my
softest suggestion, to fly up
like two birds when I speak, two
brown thrashers brandishing verbs
like twigs in your beaks, lifting
my speech the way pepper springs
the tongue from slumber. O!

If only they knew the unrestrained
innocence of your intentions,
each finger a cappella, singing
a song that rings like rain
before it falls—that never falls!
Such harmony: the bass thumb, the
pinkie's soprano, the three tenors
in between: kind quintet x 2
rowing my heart like a little boat
upon whose wooden seat I sit
strummed by Sorrow. Or maybe

I misread you completely
and you are dreaming a tangerine, one
particular hot tamale, a fabulous
banana! to peel suggestively,
like thigh-high stockings: grinning
as only hands can grin
down the legs—caramel, cocoa,
black-bean black, vanilla—such lubricious
dimensions, such public secrets!
Women sailing the streets
with God's breath at their backs.
Think of it! No! Yes:
let my brain sweat, make my
veins whimper: without you, my five-hearted
fiends, my five-headed hydras, what
of my mischievous history? The possibilities
suddenly impossible—feelings
not felt, rememberings un-
remembered—all the touches
untouched: the gallant strain

of a pilfered ant, tiny muscles
flexed with fight, the gritty
sidewalk slapped after a slip, the pulled
weed, the plucked flower—a buttercup!
held beneath Dawn's chin—the purest kiss,
the caught grasshopper's kick, honey,
chalk, charcoal, the solos teased
from guitar. Once, I played
viola for a year and never stopped

to thank you—my two angry sisters,
my two hungry men—but you knew
I just wanted to know
what the strings would say
concerning my soul, my whelming
solipsism: this perpetual solstice
where one + one = everything
and two hands teach a dawdler
the palpable alchemy
of an unreasonable world.

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Poem of the Day
"The Descent of Man" by Vijay Seshadri

My failure to evolve has been causing me a lot of grief lately.
I can't walk on my knuckles through the acres of shattered glass in the streets.
I get lost in the arcades. My feet stink at the soirees.
The hills have been bulldozed from whence cameth my help.
The halfway houses where I met my kind dreaming of flickering lights in the woods
are shuttered I don't know why.
"Try," say the good people who bring me my food,
"to make your secret anguish your secret weapon.
Otherwise, your immortality will be
an exhibit in a vitrine at the local museum, a picture in a book."
But I can't get the hang of it. The heavy instructions fall from my hands.
It takes so long for the human to become a human!
He affrights civilizations with his cry. At his approach,
the mountains retreat. A great wind crashes the garden party.
Manipulate singly neither his consummation nor his despair
but the two together like curettes
and peel back the pitch-black integuments
to discover the penciled-in figure on the painted-over mural of time,
sitting on the sketch of a boulder below
his aching sunrise, his moody, disappointed sunset.

Bonus Poem:
"Survivor" by Vijay Seshadri

We hold it against you that you survived.
People better than you are dead,
but you still punch the clock.
Your body has wizened but has not bled

its substance out on the killing floor
or flatlined in intensive care
or vanished after school
or stepped off the ledge in despair.

Of all those you started with,
only you are still around;
only you have not been listed with
the defeated and the drowned.

So how could you ever win our respect?--
you, who had the sense to duck,
you, with your strength almost intact
and all your good luck.

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Quotes for Today:

Thought of the Day:
"Cheer up! The worst is yet to come!"
--Philander Chase Johnson, author (1866-1939)
"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood."
--George Santayana, Spanish-born philosopher (1863-1952)

Read more: gatherroundandtalk.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=general&thread=26&page=10#ixzz1Vaqofgbi

Quote of the Day:
"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."
--Hubert H. Humphrey, 38th Vice President of the US (1911-78)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."
--Thomas Jefferson, 3rd US President (1743-1826)

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Poem of the Day
"Along with Youth" by Ernest Hemingway in Complete Poems [Bixon Books]

A porcupine skin,
Stiff with bad tanning,
It must have ended somewhere.
Stuffed horned owl
Pompous
Yellow eyed;
Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig
Sooted with dust.
Piles of old magazines,
Drawers of boy’s letters
And the line of love
They must have ended somewhere.
Yesterday's Tribune is gone
Along with youth
And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach
The year of the big storm
When the hotel burned down
At Seney, Michigan.

Bonus Poem.
"Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

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Quotes for Today:

Thought of the Day:
"I don't measure America by its achievement but by its potential."
--Shirley Chisholm, Congresswoman & educator (1924-2005)

Quote of the Day:
"Diplomacy--the art of saying "Nice doggie" till you can find a rock."
--Woody Allen, comedian & film director (b. 1935)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."
--Stephen Hawking, cosmologist/theoretical physicist (b. 1942)

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Poem of the Day.
"Nightmorningsky" by Peter Cooley

I'd like to see the tree as it once stood
before me, childhood, the branch and leaf
a single form of transport, ecstasy
shaking my body I give to the leaves,
the leaves return, my stare all interchange.

But that was when I had a sky to name
since I had a belief in constancy
like everyone. The sky was my background,
the drama of the tree and me, one act,
then three, then five, a Shakespearean play script.
some tragic flaw in hero, heroine,
yet to be discovered.
But now the sky
clouds even dawn with a black mist that falls
from all things and all imaginings.

The tree in my backyard is caught in this.
When I look for the sky it is still there
but now a matter of my memory
or prophecy.
Where is the root, bough, stem
set clearly against a morning, clearing?