MONTHLY QUOTATIONS
- Sarah Addison Allen (1971), American author
From the novel The Sugar Queen [2008]
"I am sure I have always thought of Christmas, when it has come around - apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English writer and social critic
From the novel A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843.
QUOTES FOR NOVEMBER 2024
The lazy mist high up in the the evening curled
And now the morn quite hides in smokey haze
The place we occupy seems all the world
- John Clare (1793-1864), English poet
From the poem "The shepherds almost wonder where they dwell" written circa 1835
"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or ger the credit for doing it."
- Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist
As quoted in Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success [1995], by Neal Whitten
"After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth . . . The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her."
"Peace is the opposite dreaming. It's built slowly and surely through brutal compromises and tiny victories that you don't even see. It's a messy business, bringing peace into the world."
"The morrow was a bright September morn;
"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
"To see a World in a grain of sand,
The Garden Year
"People think of education as something that they can finish. And what's more, when they finish, it's a rite of passage. You're finished with school. You're no more a child, and therefore anything that reminds you of school - reading books, having ideas, asking questions - that's kid's stuff. Now you're an adult, you don't do that sort of thing anymore.
"The lyric sound of laughter
"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."
QUOTES FOR MARCH 2024
'With rushing winds and gloomy skies
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.
"If everything is imperfect in his imperfect world, love is most perfect in its imperfection."
"We spend January 1st, walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives . . . not looking for flaws, but for potential."
"And the Grinch with his Grinch-feet cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?"
"A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this in this world, no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity."
"But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the wood . . . for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them."
"It is truer today than when Alfred Nobel realized it a half-century ago, that peace must be paced by human progress. Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life."
"In October, a maple tree before your window lights up your room like a giant lamp. Even on cloudy days, its presence helps to dispel the gloom."
What use is it to slumber here?
"September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of his brief life. The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath, and their shrill and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed."
"August is the slow, gentle month that stretches out the longest across the span of a year. It yawns and lingers with the light in its palms."
"Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics."
"By good nights I ought not to have so much
"What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade."
"True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions."
"No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep, and we know it."
"Easter is the only time when it's perfectly safe to put all your eggs in one basket."
"In March, the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.
"To call women the weaker sex is a libel, it is man's injustice to women. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"
"Because in February the days were really getting longer and you could see it, if you really looked. You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised. It promised, that light, and what a thing that was."
"January was a two-faced month, jangling like a jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define."
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
"The only freedom that deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others, or impede their efforts to obtain it."
QUOTES FOR OCTOBER 2024
- Elizabeth George Speare (1908-1994), American writer
From children's novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond, published in 1958.
- Attributed to Bono (Paul David Hewson) (1960-), Irish singer/songwriter and human rights activist
QUOTES FOR SEPTEMBER 2024
The earth was beautiful as if new-born;
There was that nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,
Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet
From Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874), Part I, The Student's Tale,
The Falcon of Sir Federigo
- Edith Wharton (1862-1937), American novelist, short story writer and designer
From "Vesalius in Zante (1564)," an article in North American Review (November 1902)
QUOTES FOR AUGUST 2024
August's Crown
While August yet wears her golden crown,
Ripening fields lush - bright with promise;
Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing
Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.
- Michelle L. Thieme
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Holy infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour"
- William Blake (1757-1827), English poet. painter and printmaker
From the poem "Auguries of Innocence"
QUOTES FOR JULY 2024
January brings the snow,
Makes our feet and fingers glow.
February brings the rain,
Thaws the frozen lake again.
March brings breezes, loud and shrill,
To stir the dancing daffodil.
April brings the primrose sweet,
Scatters daisies at our feet.
May brings flocks of pretty lambs
Skipping by their fleecy dams.
June bring tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.
Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and gillyflowers.
August brings the sheaves of corn,
Then the harvest home is borne.
Warm September brings the fruit;
Sportsmen then begin to shoot.
Fresh October brings the pheasant;
Then to gather nuts is pleasant.
Dull November brings the blast;
Then the leaves are whirling fast.
Chill December brings the sleet,
Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.
- Sara Coleridge (1802-1852), English author, poet and translator
Poem was originally published in Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children [1834]
"The only reality in now, today. What are you waiting for to be happy . . . Happiness is not exuberant or noisy, like pleasure or joy, it's silent, tranquil, and gentle; it's a feeling of satisfaction inside that begins with self-love."
- Isabel Allende (1942-), Chilean writer
From the novel The Japanese Lover [2015]
QUOTES FOR JUNE 2024
"And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days,
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear the murmur, or see it glisten;"
- James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), American poet, critic, and diplomat
From The Vision of Sir Launfal [1848]
"How calm, how beautiful comes on
The stilly hour, when storms are gone;
When warring winds have died away,
And clouds, beneath the glancing ray,
Melt off, and leave the land and sea
Sleeping in bright tranquility -
Fresh as if Day again were born,
Again upon the lap of Morn! -"
- Thomas Moore (1779-1852),
Irish poet, writer and lyricist
From Lala Rookh [1817], The Fire-Worshippers, Part III, Stanza 7
QUOTES FOR MAY 2024
You have everybody looking forward to no longer learning. If you have a system of education using computers, than anyone, any age, can learn by himself, can continue to be interested. If you enjoy learning, there's no reason why you should stop at a given age. People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a a certain age."
- Ivan Asimov (1920-1992), Russian-born American writer, professor of biochemistry
From The Dangers of Intelligence and Other Science Essays [1986]
"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'"
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-American writer and artist
From The Prophet
QUOTES FOR APRIL 2024
Fills all the April hills,
The joy-song of the crocus,
The mirth of daffodils."
- Clinton Scollard (1860-1932), American poet and writer of fiction
From the poem "April Music"
- Erich Fromm (1900-1980), German psychologist and philosopher
From Man for Himself, Chapter 3 [1947]
The dark and stubborn Winter dies:
Far-off unseen, Spring faintly cries.
Bidding her earliest child arise:
March!"
- Baynard Taylor (1825-1878), American poet, literary critic, travel author and diplomat
From the poem "March"
- Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855), English novelist and poet
From the novel Jane Eyre. published in 1847
QUOTES FOR FEBRUARY 2024
"The February sunshine sleeps your boughs
And tints the buds and swells the leaves within;
While the song-sparrow, warbling from her perch,
Tells you that spring is near."
- William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), American poet and journalist
From the poem "Among the Trees," published in 1874
"If everything is imperfect in his imperfect world, love is most perfect in its imperfection."
- Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007), Swedish screenwriter and film and theatre director
From the 1957 film The Seventh Seal
QUOTES FOR JANUARY 2024
Attributed to Ellen Goodman (1941-). American journalist
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"The cup of life is not so shallow
That we have drained the best
That all the wine at once we swallow
And lees make all the rest."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
American essayist, lecturer and poet
American essayist, lecturer and poet
From 1827 journal entry reproduced in Emerson: The Mind on Fire [1995]
QUOTES FOR DECEMBER 2023
- Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) (1904-1991), American children's author and cartoonist
From How the Grinch Stole Christmas! [1957]
- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American First Lady, activist and diplomat
From You Learn by Living [1960]
QUOTES FOR NOVEMBER 2023
- Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), Canadian author, novelist, poet and diarist
From Anne of Windy Poplars, published in 1936
- Ralph Bunche (1904-1971), American political scientist, diplomat and civil rights leader
From Nobel Lecture "Some Reflections of Peace in Our Time" on December 11, 1950
QUOTES FOR OCTOBER 2023
- John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist, conservationist and writer
From Leaf and Tendril, published in 1908
What use is it to slumber here,
Though the heart be sad and weary?
What use is it to slumber here,
Though the day rise dark and dreary?
For that mist may break when the sun is high,
And this soul forget its sorrow,
And the rosy ray of the closing day
May promise a brighter morrow.
- Emily Brontë, (1818-1848), English novelist and poet
QUOTES FOR SEPTEMBER 2023
"If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied."
- Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist
As quoted in the The 12 best Questions to Ask Customers [2001], by Jim Meisenheimer
As quoted in the The 12 best Questions to Ask Customers [2001], by Jim Meisenheimer
"September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of his brief life. The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath, and their shrill and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed."
- Rowland E. Robinson (1833-1900), American farmer, artist, and author
From the poem "September Days"
QUOTES FOR AUGUST 2023
- Attributed to Victoria Erickson, poet, author and creative writing coach, based in Austin, Texas.
- Bernard Baruch (1870-1965), American financier and statesman
From Baruch's Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946
QUOTES FOR JULY 2023
"And so with the sunshine and the great burst of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), American writer
From The Great Gatsby [1925]
Put on me, but there seems not other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far
As I can see no way out but through -
Leastways for me - and then they'll be convinced."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963), American poet
From the poem "A Servant to Servants" [1914]
QUOTES FOR JUNE 2023
- Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), British horticulturalist, garden designer, artist and writer
From her book Wood and Garden, published in 1899
"True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions."
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician
From The Spectator (1711-1714) No. 15 (March 17, 1711)
QUOTES FOR MAY 2023
"In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down."
- Hanuki Murakami (1949-), Japanese novelist and short story writer
From the novel Norwegian Wood, published in 1987
Love and Friendship
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree -
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom more constantly?
The wild-rose briar is sweet in spring
The summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.
- Emily Brontë, (1818-1848), English novelist and poet
QUOTES FOR APRIL 2023
- Hal Borland (1900-1978), American author, journalist and naturalist
From "April's End," a New York Times editorial, April 29, 1956
- Attributed to Evan Esar (1899-1995), American humorist
QUOTES FOR MARCH 2023
- John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American author
From East of Eden, published in 1952
From East of Eden, published in 1952
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian lawyer, anti-colonial activist and political ethicist who led a non-violent campaign to achieve Indian independence from British rule.
From Young India, October 4, 1930
QUOTES FOR FEBRUARY 2023
- Elizabeth Strout (1956-), American novelist and author
From the novel Olive, Again [2019]
"Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each includes the other.
Love is an echo of the feelings of a unity between two persons, which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships."
- Felix Adler (1851-1933), German-American philosopher, professor of political and social ethics
From Life and Destiny [1913]
QUOTES FOR JANUARY 2023
- Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), American novelist and short story writer
From the novel The Price of Salt [1952], later republished as Carol
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."
- Frank Crane (1861-1928), American writer, Presbyterian minister, speaker and columnist
As quoted in Business Education World [Volume 15, 1935, Page 172]
QUOTES FOR DECEMBER 2022
- Albert Camus (1913-1960), French-Algerian philosopher, author, dramatist. and journalist
From Return to Tipasa [1954]
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English philosopher and political economist
- From On Liberty [1859]
"It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American naturalist, essayist, poet and philosopher
"The time of the falling of leaves has come again. Once more in our morning walk we tread upon carpets of gold and crimson, of brown and bronze, woven by the winds or the rains out of these delicate textures while we slept."
QUOTES FOR NOVEMBER 2022
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist
From a letter that Einstein wrote to his son Eduard on February 5, 1930. The quote is an English translation because the letter was written in German. The exact quote is "Beim Menschem ist es wie beim Velo. Nur wenn er faehrt, kann er bequem die Balance halten."
"The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July."
Autumn: From the journal of Henry David Thoreau (ed. 1892).
QUOTES FOR OCTOBER 2022
- John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist, conservationist and writer
From Under the Maples, published posthumously by Clara Barrus in 1921
"Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another."
- Kofi Annan (1938-2018), Ghanaian diplomat and seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006
Nobel Lecture, Oslo, Norway (December 10, 2001)