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August 22, 2025
The origin of life only had to happen once.
—Richard Dawkins
(from The God Delusion)
August 19, 2025
The Jews had long been the object of hatred and persecution in Christian Europe. In part this hatred derived from religious differences, but there was also an economic factor. Church laws against usury had given the Jews a monopoly on money lending, a precarious but often profitable activity. The envy and hatred of the Christians led to periodic outbreaks of violence.
—Harrison, Sullivan, Sherman
(from the seventh edition of A Short History of Western Civilization,
chapter 28: The Rise of National States)
August 5, 2025
True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true. Wise men don't need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren't wise.
—Lao Tzu
from Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell's translation)
July 29, 2025
In a state of chaos self-preservation is the supreme duty.
—Khushwant Singh
(from Train to Pakistan)
July 24, 2025
Towards the end of the Middle Ages there were numerous challenges to the Church's position, one of which was "the capitalist ethos emerging in economic life, especially among urban patricians but also among members of the rural gentry and affluent peasants. Challenging the Church's ancient distrust of wealth and materialism, the new ethos viewed wealth and its acquistion as a positive force in society [ . . . . ] Implicit in the capitalist ethos was a mentality oriented toward competition, worldliness, individualism, pragmatism, and a work ethic—all values that did not fit easily into the Church's concept of how the drama of salvation should be played.
—Harrison, Sullivan, Sherman
(from the seventh edition of A Short History of Western Civilization,
chapter 25: The Decline of the Church)
July 23, 2025
There is a solitude of space/A solitude of sea/A solitude of death, but these/Society shall be/Compared with that profounder site/That polar privacy/A soul admitted to itself—/Finite infinity.
—Emily Dickinson
July 20, 2025
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
—Bertrand Russell
July 19, 2025
For where the soul is highest, noblest, most honourable, still it is lowest, meekest and mildest.
—Julian of Norwich
(from A Book of Showings)
July 17, 2025
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose.
—Kris Kristofferson
(from the song Bobby McGee)
July 15, 2025
Professor punished for arguing classical music isn't racist gets massive settlement.
—John Solomon
(posted on X July 15, 2025)
July 13, 2025
Logic and sermons never convince,/The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
—Walt Whitman
(from Leaves of Grass)
July 12, 2025
Most of the change we think we see in life/Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
—Robert Frost
(from "The Black Cottage")
July 10, 2025
Brevity is the soul of lingerie
—Dorothy Parker
July 9, 2025
We’re often told that we must choose between reason and spirituality. But mysticism makes no such demand. It draws from reason’s well, but it doesn’t drown in it.
—Ayaan Hirsi Ali
(posted on X July 9, 2025)
July 8, 2025
If you want to be respected, be respectable.
If you want to be liked, be likeable.
If you want to be loved, be lovable.
If you want to be employed, be employable.
—William J. H. Boetcker
July 7, 2025
It is good to maintain life and further it; it is bad to damage and destroy life.
—Albert Schweitzer
(from Reverence for Life)
July 6, 2025
If sarcasm is the protest of a feeble mind, then quips are expedient little needles flicked at giants.
—Heather Brown
(from heatherbrownonline.com)
July 4, 2025
Happy Independence Day Everybody! GOD Bless America, The Land that I Love! Now, let Freedom Ring for Juneteenth & July 4th, from the Rooftop of every Village and every Hamlet, from every Mountainside!
—Mr. T
(posted on X on July 4, 2025)
June 30, 2025
To escape criticism—do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
—Elbert Hubbard
June 27, 2025
Northern Europeans, spearheaded by the Vikings, established settlements at Novgorod, Smolensk, and Kiev; from these emerged the Kievan principality that constituted the first effective state in Russia.
—Harrison, Sullivan, Sherman
(from the seventh edition of A Short History of Western Civilization,
chapter 21: The Medieval Expansion of Europe)
June 26, 2025
When the individual feels, the community reels.
—Aldous Huxley
(from Brave New World)
June 24, 2025
Reading books changes lives. So does writing them.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach
(from Simple Abundance)
June 23, 2025
I have never advocated war, except as a means of peace.
—Ulysses S. Grant
June 22, 2025
All great truths began as blasphemies.
—George Bernard Shaw
(from Annajanska)
June 21, 2025
Bombs away!
—Buck Henry
(from the movie
The Owl and the Pussycat)
May 2, 2025
My love is vengeance that's never free.
—Pete Townsend
(from the song by
The Who "Behind Blue eyes")
May 1, 2025
Ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love.
—C.S. Lewis
(from Mere Christianity)
HeatherBrownOnline.com. There are so many Heather Browns in the world, which one are you looking for? Maybe you're looking for me.