Lyman Abbott Quotes
American - Author December 18, 1835 - October 22, 1922

Every life is march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.
Lyman Abbott

Patience is passion tamed.
Lyman Abbott

It is easy to condemn, it is better to pity.
Lyman Abbott

A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice- but as yet unstained.
Lyman Abbott

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.
Lyman Abbott

I abhor a hoe. I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.
Lyman Abbott

I cannot harness a horse. I am afraid of a cow.
Lyman Abbott

Religion is not a conclusion of the reason.
Lyman Abbott

The highest qualities of character... must be earned.
Lyman Abbott


Francis Thompson Quotes
English - Poet December 18, 1859 - November 13, 1907

An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident.
Francis Thompson

All things by immortal power. Near of far, to each other linked are, that thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.
Francis Thompson

And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
Francis Thompson

Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
Francis Thompson

The devil doesn't know how to sing, only how to howl.
Francis Thompson

For we are born in other's pain, and perish in our own.
Francis Thompson


Hector Hugh Munro Quotes
British - Novelist December 18, 1870 - November 14, 1916

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.
Hector Hugh Munro

The sacrifices of friendship were beautiful in her eyes as long as she was not asked to make them.
Hector Hugh Munro

He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
Hector Hugh Munro

You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
Hector Hugh Munro

I always say beauty is only sin deep.
Hector Hugh Munro

It's no use growing older if you only learn new ways of misbehaving yourself.
Hector Hugh Munro

He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.
Hector Hugh Munro

Hors d'oeuvres have always a pathetic interest for me; they remind me of one's childhood that one goes through wondering what the next course is going to be like - and during the rest of the menu one wishes one had eaten more of the hors d'oeuvres.
Hector Hugh Munro

Great Socialist statesmen aren't made, they're still-born.
Hector Hugh Munro

Addresses are given to us to conceal our whereabouts.
Hector Hugh Munro

The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.
Hector Hugh Munro

No one can be an unbeliever nowadays. The Christian Apologists have left one nothing to disbelieve.
Hector Hugh Munro

Children with Hyacinth's temperament don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more.
Hector Hugh Munro


Christopher Fry Quotes
English - Playwright December 18, 1907 - June 30, 2005

Between our birth and death we may touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing.
Christopher Fry

What after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.
Christopher Fry

The best thing we can do is to make wherever we're lost in look as much like home as we can.
Christopher Fry

The dark is light enough.
Christopher Fry

I want to look at life - at the commonplaces of existence - as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
Christopher Fry

In my plays I want to look at life - at the commonplace of existence-as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
Christopher Fry

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.
Christopher Fry

Poetry has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.
Christopher Fry

In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment.
Christopher Fry

Has made an honest woman of the supernatural.
Christopher Fry

The lines marking a penalty area are a disgrace to the playing fields of a public school.
Christopher Fry

Imagination is the wide-open eye which leads us always to see truth more vividly.
Christopher Fry

Coffee in England is just toasted milk.
Christopher Fry


Alfred Bester Quotes
American - Author December 18, 1913 - September 30, 1987

I'm not much interested in extrapolating science and technology; I merely use extrapolation as a means of putting people into new quandaries which produce colorful pressures and conflicts.
Alfred Bester

Most science fiction, quite frankly, is silly nonsense.
Alfred Bester

It's obvious we can't all be a Gully Foyle, but most of us energize at such a low level, so far short of our real capabilities, we could all be more, do more.
Alfred Bester

I'm a great believer in people and their untapped potential.
Alfred Bester


Ossie Davis Quotes
American - Actor December 18, 1917 - February 4, 2005

I find, in being black, a thing of beauty: a joy; a strength; a secret cup of gladness.
Ossie Davis

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.
Ossie Davis

Struggle is strengthening. Battling with evil gives us the power to battle evil even more.
Ossie Davis

College ain't so much where you been as how you talk when you get back.
Ossie Davis


Karen DeCrow Quotes
American - Activist December 18, 1937 - June 6, 2014

In my opinion, the battles over birth control and Planned Parenthood are primarily neither political nor religious. This is an issue of equality for women. This is an issue of women's rights: Planned Parenthood is the most important private provider of reproductive health care for women in the United States.
Karen DeCrow

Opera is the most complete art form. It includes drama, acting, technology (lighting), art (the sets), dance, and the epitome of the human voices. But mostly, go for the glorious music. The arts are crucial to the life of every community.
Karen DeCrow

After 'Roe v. Wade' - when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 - I thought the national conversation about abortion and birth control would be over. It was not.
Karen DeCrow

No matter what is happening in life or in the world - war, natural disaster, poor health, pain, the death of loved ones - if existence is filled with art, music and literature, life will be fulfilling, a joy.
Karen DeCrow

I enjoy practicing law too much to even contemplate retiring, but I often think about engaging in serious study of the history of art, of the intricacies of classical music. I could write a fugue, or perhaps learn to play the cello.
Karen DeCrow

The irony is that the more we fight age, the more it shows. Paint on a 50-year-old face brings to mind a Gilbert and Sullivan comic figure. Smooth the cheeks, and suddenly the ear lobes and hands look out of place. Do we run around in October, painting the gold leaves green?
Karen DeCrow

As any opera fan knows, lawyers and judges do not fare well in most operas. Just consider the productions of 'Andrea Chenier,' 'Aida, Norma,' 'Billy Budd,' 'Peter Grimes,' 'The Crucible,' 'Lost in the Stars,' 'The Marriage of Figaro,' 'The Makropulos Case' and Wagner's 'Ring' cycle. Around 1810, the theme of justice emerged in opera.
Karen DeCrow

In my opinion, right up there with free public schools, our free public library system is what makes citizenship possible, even what makes America great.
Karen DeCrow

We should cease thinking about men as the enemy of children and women.
Karen DeCrow

During the 19th-century struggle for women's rights in America, many saw a competition between rights for black people and those for women.
Karen DeCrow

Just as the Supreme Court has said that women have the right to choose whether or not to be parents, men should also have that right.
Karen DeCrow

In the battle between the sexes, men and women will go practically to the end of the earth in illogical, irrational ways to give each other pain.
Karen DeCrow

I joined NOW on an issue of pay.
Karen DeCrow

When I was in school, there was no such thing as girls' athletics.
Karen DeCrow

As I grow older, I become more and more of a Marxist - Groucho, that is. When you have lived two-thirds of your life, you know the value of a good joke.
Karen DeCrow

If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.
Karen DeCrow

From 1961 to 1964, I was fortunate enough to work at a think tank in the Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago. As a writer and editor, I reported in a publication about the thinkers. Our offices were in a former mansion; I worked in what had been the ballroom. As I sat typing my copy, I imagined the dancers waltzing.
Karen DeCrow

Father's Day each year makes me grateful for what my father did for me. This has little to do with our relationship, and much to do with what he taught me.
Karen DeCrow

In the 1950s in the United States, few music lovers were listening to chamber music. Daddy played Bach and Haydn on our phonograph for me. Not only did I become familiar with the form; he discussed the concerti. My own head start. My own Head Start.
Karen DeCrow

Daddy was hilarious. He could take the most mundane event and tell it so that we all on the floor laughing. He trained me in the joys of humor.
Karen DeCrow

Most of us believe that women can do what men do. The challenge is to convince employers, legislators, mothers, that men can do what women do.
Karen DeCrow

Asked to give advice to a 13-year-old girl about how to lead her life, I say find something you love to do. The goal shouldn't be accumulating money. It might be making changes in the world, or in your country.
Karen DeCrow

In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that minority set-aside programs in municipal contracts were unconstitutional. The court wondered if there were proof that people of color even want to receive municipal contracts.
Karen DeCrow

How did abortion and birth control impact the congressional race of Dan Maffei and Ann Marie Buerkle or the presidential race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney? I don't know. But I think the so-called social issues were front and center in the minds of voters. These issues may indeed have lost the Republicans some elections.
Karen DeCrow

George McGovern - and I campaigned very hard for his election - was not, in the summer of 1971, a strong feminist ally. But he did come around.
Karen DeCrow

If supporters of equality for women want to vote for the best candidate, they must look to a person regardless of gender and must disregard the gender of political opponents.
Karen DeCrow

Operas elucidate, in a way sometimes absent in other theatrical productions, the very human fact that in every hero, there is a thread of duplicity. In every villain, there is another side to consider: We don't have to like him or her, but we are compelled to think about motivation.
Karen DeCrow

Knowing constitutional law helps one at the opera. The trial in 'Billy Budd,' as example, invokes the fugitive slave clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Karen DeCrow

I was running for mayor of Syracuse - the first woman to run for mayor in our city, or in New York, and one of the first in the United States. I was known for my strong conservation plank. In 1969, the term 'conservation' was hardly on the tip of every citizen's tongue.
Karen DeCrow

Fifty-nine cents. For years, I wore a button - '59 cents.' Many of my colleagues wore it also. The purpose was so that people would come up and ask, 'What does '59 cents' mean?' One could then launch into a discussion about how women working full time in the U.S. earn 59 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Karen DeCrow

The censors have always had a field day with James Joyce, specifically with 'Ulysses,' but also with his other writings. The conventional wisdom is that this is because of sexually explicit passages (and there certainly are those). I have always thought that what the critics hated and feared about Joyce is his cry for human freedom.
Karen DeCrow

Despite the strength of the feminist movement in the 1970s and beyond, a fable has persisted that educated women are rejected as marriage partners.
Karen DeCrow

Most of the well-known American feminists of the 19th century did not come out against the institution of marriage.
Karen DeCrow

Is it a recent occurrence that women have tried to control when and if they reproduced? Absolutely not. By 2000 B.C., there was worldwide use of herbal potions to prevent pregnancy. Condoms were made from animal bladders.
Karen DeCrow

Opponents of legal birth control, including abortion, have tried for decades to play the race card, saying that legal abortion is racist. What they ignore is that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966.
Karen DeCrow

Most experiences are either sensual or intellectual. Chamber music, played by a small group so the listener can follow what each player is doing, is both.
Karen DeCrow

In chamber music, the audience can hear each instrument and understand (and feel) what the composer and the musicians have in mind as they play.
Karen DeCrow

Composers most identified with the chamber music form are Corelli, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and, of course, Bach. Of course, Bach. If there is any one composer who gives us reason and emotion, it is Bach.
Karen DeCrow

Education, doing homework, is the way to lift up girls. Around the world, where girls are educated, the economy and the standard of living rise.
Karen DeCrow

Betty Ford and I were colleagues for years, working together for women's rights in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in the country.
Karen DeCrow

First lady has been a thankless position. Eleanor Roosevelt was brilliant and had strong views. She was criticized for her politics and for her appearance. Mrs. Roosevelt was attacked for being too involved in politics. Bess Truman was criticized for being uninvolved in politics.
Karen DeCrow

Patricia Nixon gave up a career to become a political wife. She rose to the pinnacle of glory and then fell to disgrace because of deeds over which she had neither control nor knowledge.
Karen DeCrow

Being first lady is a full-time job. Betty Ford worked full time and should have received a salary. Michelle Obama works full time and should be paid.
Karen DeCrow

The Metropolitan Opera, of course, is the gold standard in opera. The Met experience includes the huge stage, the vast audience, the elaborate sets. Anyone who saw 'Faust' there - I did - knows exactly what hell is like, complete with fire, smoke and terror.
Karen DeCrow

One year, I was a patron of a new opera. It was, to put it kindly, unpleasant to the ear. The friends I went with hated it. Keeping quiet about my contribution, I was outed when one of them, reading the program at the restaurant during dinner, saw my name.
Karen DeCrow

When 'Carmen' premiered in 1875, it was panned by the critics. It survived 45 performances. It was called a musical and moral outrage. After Bizet died, at age 37, 'Carmen' became wildly popular. If you believe in your creation, and the rest of the world is laughing or yelling 'Boo,' don't give up.
Karen DeCrow

Over the years, the most ponderous problem for women has been that men think that men and women are very different. Another of our massive problems is that women also think that men and women are very different.
Karen DeCrow

Our culture is intent on taking the lines out of people's faces - surgically, with costly creams, and with fear and trembling - when, in fact, the opposite should be the case. As artists know, if there is anything behind a face, that face improves with age.
Karen DeCrow

At 20 and 30, we are like travelers in a foreign country, reading the guide book to learn how to behave, to learn when the post office is open. Trivia looms important; critical issues fade into a pastel background, unrecognized.
Karen DeCrow

It is crucial to be healthy, for pain wipes out the possibility for pleasure, and severe pain removes the possibility of turning to the world outside the body. So we must establish the idea that it is important to look well, not to look young.
Karen DeCrow


Michael Moorcock Quotes
English - Writer Born: December 18, 1939

Though I don't have any serious argument with Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods', I believe that Americans cease to be Europeans - the land makes them become Americans. You see it happening all the time when you travel around America.
Michael Moorcock

I'd started doing fanzines from the age of nine. I'd been doing as many copies as you can get carbon paper into an upright typewriter, and I'd try to sell them at school.
Michael Moorcock

I had this funny family. At one end, they were breeding dogs in south-east London - for greyhound racing - and at the other, my uncle was living in Downing Street. And I would actually go to Downing Street, which didn't strike me as funny. I'd get on the number 15 bus.
Michael Moorcock

I really did have a very egalitarian upbringing.
Michael Moorcock

I have a kind of innate sense of structure, which also makes me a good mimic.
Michael Moorcock

I come from an almost wholly secular background and have no quarrel with religion.
Michael Moorcock

P.G. Wodehouse was a huge influence on me when I was younger, as were Edgar Rice Burroughs and George Bernard Shaw.
Michael Moorcock

Some of my earliest work was in comics. I tend to think in pictures and always like to write scenes possessing the dynamic you find in comics.
Michael Moorcock