Meandering in the mist . . .

Today is the birthday of John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821), poet. He was one of the key figures of the Romantic movement and best known for his works La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Ode To A Nightingale and Ode On a Grecian Urn.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness." - John Keats

"Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and very fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid." - John Keats

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." - John Keats

"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?" - John Keats


"My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk." - John Keats

"There is a budding tomorrow in midnight." - John Keats

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Meandering on the edge . . .

Today is the birthday of Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972), poet. Ezra Pound believed that poetry is the highest of arts and he is oft referred to as the poet's poet.

"All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty." - Ezra Pound

"If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates." - Ezra Pound

"In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries." - Ezra Pound

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand." - Ezra Pound

"When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take - choose the bolder." - Ezra Pound

"Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one." - Ezra Pound

"If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays." - Ezra Pound

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Meandering in logic . . .

Today is the birthday of Alfred Jules Ayer (October 29, 1910 – June 27, 1989), philosopher. He is best known for his promotion of logical positivism and his books Language, Truth and Logic (1936) and The Problem of Knowledge (1956).

It is purported that Alfred Jules Ayer had a near-death experience which has many asking: Did atheist philosopher see God when he died?

"The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved." - A. J. Ayer

"If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted." - A. J. Ayer

"I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions." - A. J. Ayer

"Why should you mind being wrong if someone can show you that you are?" - A. J. Ayer

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Meandering around . . .

Today is the birthday of Jonas Salk (October 28, 1914 – June 23, 1995), medical researcher and virologist. He is best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine.

"It's the sensitivity to pattern recognition that seems to me to be of great importance. It's a matter of being able to find meaning, whether it's positive or negative, in whatever you encounter." - Jonas Salk

"I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution." - Jonas Salk

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's." - Jonas Salk

"Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality." - Jonas Salk

"I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams." - Jonas Salk

"Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next." - Jonas Salk

"It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner." - Jonas Salk

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Meandering here and there . . .

Today is the birthday of Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (October 27/28, 1466/1469, Rotterdam – July 12, 1536, Basel), humanist.

"There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other." - Desiderius Erasmus

"Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself." - Desiderius Erasmus

"What is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?" - Desiderius Erasmus

"I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger." - Desiderius Erasmus

"Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself." - Desiderius Erasmus

"The desire to write grows with writing." - Desiderius Erasmus

"Your library is your paradise." - Desiderius Erasmus

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Today is the birthday of Dylan Marlais Thomas (October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953), writer and poet.

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light" - Dylan Thomas

"He who seeks rest finds boredom. He who seeks work finds rest." - Dylan Thomas

"The function of posterity is to look after itself." - Dylan Thomas

"Somebody's boring me. I think it's me." - Dylan Thomas

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Meandering in thought . . .

Today is the birthday of Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970), author. He is best known for his work, Think and Grow Rich, one of the best-selling motivational personal development and self-help books of all time.

"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill

"Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along." - Napoleon Hill

"We are what we are, because of the vibrations of thought which we pick up and register, through the stimuli of our daily environment." - Napoleon Hill

"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill

"All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea!" - Napoleon Hill

"Every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit." - Napoleon Hill

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Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Anne Tyler (born October 25, 1941), novelist. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for her eleventh novel, Breathing Lessons.

"It's true that it's a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them." - Anne Tyler

"If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all." - Anne Tyler

"The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning." - Anne Tyler

"For me, writing something down was the only road out." - Anne Tyler

"I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get." - Anne Tyler

"People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have." - Anne Tyler

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