Daily Poem and Quotations

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Quotes for Today:

Thought of the Day:
"There are mighty few people who think what they think they think."
--Robert Henri, artist (1865-1929)

Quote of the Day:
"It is better to learn late than never."
--Publilius Syrus, Latin maxim writer (1st century B.C.)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
--Carl Sagan, astronomer & author (1934-1996)

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Quotes for Today.
8-)Dorothy Rothschild was born at West End, N.J. on August 22nd in 1893. She didn't enjoy life, and made a reputation for bitter commentary of great style and acid wit as Dorothy Parker. For most of her life, her work was welcomed by the public and editors, although she was fired at Vanity Fair for scathing reviews of Broadway productions. Despite being one of the most quoted writers in America, she struggled with alcohol and depression, and attempted suicide four times. Her acid pen sometimes dripped poetry as well as prose.
QUOTES:

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

My land is bare of chattering folk;
the clouds are low along the ridges,
and sweet's the air with curly smoke
from all my burning bridges.

Thoughts for a Sunshiny Morning:
It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
"Aha, my little dear," I say,
"Your clan will pay me back some day."

Unfortunate Coincidence:
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying,
Lady, make a note of this —
One of you is lying.


Thought of the Day:
"All life is a concatenation of ephemeralities."
--Alfred E. Kahn, economist (1917-2010)

Quote of the Day:
"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater."
--Gail Godwin, novelist & short story writer (b. 1937)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it."
--Colin Powell, ret. US Gen. & Secretary of State (b. 1937)

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Poem of the Day.
"Bantams in Pine Woods" by Wallace Stevens in The Collected Poems [Vintage Books]

Chieftain Iffucan of Azcan in caftan
Of tan with henna hackles, halt!

Damned universal cock, as if the sun
Was blackamoor to bear your blazing tail.

Fat! Fat! Fat! Fat! I am the personal.
Your world is you. I am my world.

You ten-foot poet among inchlings. Fat!
Begone! An inchling bristles in these pines,

Bristles, and points their Appalachian tangs,
And fears not portly Azcan nor his hoos.

Bonus Poem:
"Anecdote of the Jar"

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

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Quotes for Today:
On August 23rd in 1833, Great Britain lifted the chains of slavery in all her colonies. On this day in 1939, von Ribbentrop and Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, bringing chains to millions in Eastern Europe. And on this day in 1989, the fiftieth anniversary of that pact, two million people formed a 600 kilometer (370 mile) "Baltic Chain" of protest across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Quotes:
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
- François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.
- Simone Signoret, 1921 - 1985

Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
- Thomas Dekker, 1577 - 1632

If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.
- Maya Angelou

Before man can be free, and equal, and truly wise, he must cast aside the chains of habit and superstition; he must strip sensuality of its pomp, and selfishness of its excuses, and contemplate actions and objects as they really are.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792 - 1822

Thought of the Day:
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
--Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher (6th century B.C.)

Quote of the Day:
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
--Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."
--Lillian Hellman, playwright (1905-1984)

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Poem of the Day.
"Another Elegy" by Jericho Brown

This is what your dying looks like.
You believe in the sun. You believe
I don't love you. Always be closing,
Said our favorite professor before
He let the gun go off in his mouth.
I turned 29 the way any man turns
In his sleep, unaware of the earth
Moving beneath him, its plates in
Their places, a dated disagreement.
Let's fight it out, baby. You have
Only so long left. A man turns
In his sleep, so I take a picture.
He won't look at it, of course. It's
His bad side, his Mr. Hyde, the hole
In a husband's head, the O
Of his wife's mouth. Every night,
I take a pill. Miss one, and I'm gone.
Miss two, and we're through. Hotels
Bore me, unless I get a mountain view,
A room in which my cell won't work,
And there's nothing to do but see
The sun go down into the ground
That cradles us as any coffin can.

Bonus Poem:

I spent what light Saturday sent sweating
And learned to cuss cutting grass for women
Kind enough to say they couldn't tell
The damned difference between their mowed
Lawns and their vacuumed carpets just before
Handing over a five dollar bill rolled tighter
Than a joint and asking me in to change
A few light bulbs. I called those women old
Because they wouldn't move out of a chair
Without my help or walk without a hand
At the base of their backs. I called them
Old, and they must have been; they're all dead
Now, dead and in the earth I once tended.
The loneliest people have the earth to love
And not one friend their own age—only
Mothers to baby them and big sisters to boss
Them around, women they want to please
And pray for the chance to say please to.
I don't do that kind of work anymore. My job
Is to look at the childhood I hated and say
I once had something to do with my hands.

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Quotes for Today on Deadlines:
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
- Douglas Adams, 1952 - 2001

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
- Frank Zappa, 1940 - 1993

"For truth there is no deadline."
- Heywood Campbell Broun, 1888 - 1939

"I no longer feel I'll be dead by thirty; now it's sixty. I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it. I'm still writing, I'm still writing poetry, I still can't explain why, and I'm still running out of time."
- Margaret Atwood

A"re you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines'."
- Tom Robbins

"One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines."
- Emile Zola, 1840 - 1902

Thought of the Day:
"Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right."
--Kurt Herbert Adler, Austrian-born conductor (1905-1988)

Quote of the Day:
"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."
--Garrison Keillor, humorist & radio host (b. 1942)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"I feel the greatest gift w can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self."
--Fred Rogers, Presbyterian minister & TV host (1928-2003)

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Poem of the Day.
"A Blessing" by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

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Poem of the Day
"Summer" by Amy Lowell in Selected Poems [Library of America]

Some men there are who find in nature all
Their inspiration, hers the sympathy
Which spurs them on to any great endeavor,
To them the fields and woods are closest friends,
And they hold dear communion with the hills;
The voice of waters soothes them with its fall,
And the great winds bring healing in their sound.
To them a city is a prison house
Where pent up human forces labour and strive,
Where beauty dwells not, driven forth by man;
But where in winter they must live until
Summer gives back the spaces of the hills.
To me it is not so. I love the earth
And all the gifts of her so lavish hand:
Sunshine and flowers, rivers and rushing winds,
Thick branches swaying in a winter storm,
And moonlight playing in a boat's wide wake;
But more than these, and much, ah, how much more,
I love the very human heart of man.
Above me spreads the hot, blue mid-day sky,
Far down the hillside lies the sleeping lake
Lazily reflecting back the sun,
And scarcely ruffled by the little breeze
Which wanders idly through the nodding ferns.
The blue crest of the distant mountain, tops
The green crest of the hill on which I sit;
And it is summer, glorious, deep-toned summer,
The very crown of nature's changing year
When all her surging life is at its full.
To me alone it is a time of pause,
A void and silent space between two worlds,
When inspiration lags, and feeling sleeps,
Gathering strength for efforts yet to come.
For life alone is creator of life,
And closest contact with the human world
Is like a lantern shining in the night
To light me to a knowledge of myself.
I love the vivid life of winter months
In constant intercourse with human minds,
When every new experience is gain
And on all sides we feel the great world's heart;
The pulse and throb of life which makes us men!

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Quotes for Today:

Thought of the Day:
"While we read history, we make history."
--George William Curtis, author-editor (1824-1892)

Quote of the Day:
"But what is the difference between literataure and journalism? Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read at all. That is all."
--Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright (1854-1900)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questins."
--Claude Levi-Strauss, French anthropologist (1908-2009)

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Poem of the Day.
"Opal" by Amy Lowell

You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis,
The silver of moon-touched magnolias.
When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches.

Bonus Poem:
"Carrefour" by Amy Lowell

O You,
Who came upon me once
Stretched under apple-trees just after bathing,
Why did you not strangle me before speaking
Rather than fill me with the wild white honey of your words
And then leave me to the mercy
Of the forest bees.

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Quotes for Today:

Thought of the Day:
"Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights."
--Georg Wilhelm Hegel, German philosopher (1770-1831)

Quote of the Day:
"Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet."
--Chinese proverb.

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose."
--Indira Gandhi, Indian Prime Minister (1917-1984)

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Quotes of the Today about Back to School:

As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief that can rise to delight that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us.
- John Boynton Priestley, 1894 - 1984

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

By the end of high school I was not an educated man, but I knew how to try to become one.
- Clifton Fadiman, 1904 - 1999

Success is the study of the obvious. Everyone should take Obvious I and Obvious II in school.
- Jim Rohn, 1930 - 2009

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?
- Mortimer J. Adler, 1902 - 2001

The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.
- Flannery O'Connor, 1925 - 1964


Thought for Today:
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
--Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel, Romanian-born jounalist-author (b. 1928)

Quote of the Day:
"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
--Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone--my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music--ensemble music, not soloism--we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give."
--Catherine Drinker Bowen, violinst & writer (1897--1973)

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Poem of the Day.
"The Hurricane" by William Carlos Williams

The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.

Bonus Poem:
"Complete Destruction" by William Carlos Williams
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it

in the back yard.
Those fleas that escaped
earth and fire
died by the cold.

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Quotes for Today:
Along the eastern seaboard of the US, millions were visited by Irene, a hurricane that howled in areas that don't have a great deal of experience with them. It will be expensive and lives (41) were lost.
The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.
- Aesop, ancient Greek fabulist

Indeed, we do not really live unless we have friends surrounding us like a firm wall against the winds of the world.
- Charles Hanson Towne, 1877 - 1947

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
- James Russell Lowell, 1819 - 1891

And all the winds go sighing, For sweet things dying.
- Marcel Proust, 1871 - 1922

The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows; a wall against the wind. This is the willow's purpose.
- Frank Herbert, 1920 - 1986

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862


Thought of the Day:
"Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals."
--Dorothy Height, civil rights activist (1912-2010)

Quote of the Day:
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."
--Sir Richard Burton, English explorer & writer (1831-1890)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif [/img]Quote of the Moment:
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
--Antoine de Saint Exupery, French writer (1900-1944)

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Poem of the Day:

"Your breath was shed" (Poem) by Dylan Thomas in The Poems of Dylan Thomas [New Directions]

Your breath was shed
Invisible to make
About the soiled undead
Night for my sake,

A raining trail
Intangible to them
With biter's tooth and tail
And cobweb drum,

A dark as deep
My love as a round wave
To hide the wolves of sleep
And mask the grave.

Bonus Poem:
"And death shall have no dominion" by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.