Yesterday     Tomorrow

"I have learned from an early age to abjure the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

Leonardo da Vinci
(04/15/1452 – 05/02/1519)
Italian artist, writer, inventor, philosopher... the Original Renaissance Man (image courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library)

"Hope says to us constantly, 'Go on, go on,' and leads us to the grave."

Francoise d'Aubigne de Maintenon
(11/27/1635 – 04/15/1719)
French courtesan, writer

"My dear child, you must believe in God despite what the clergy tell you."

Benjamin Jowett
(04/15/1817 – 10/01/1893)
English educator, scholar

"She had an unequaled gift of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities."

Henry James
(04/15/1843 – 02/28/1916)
US writer

"Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned."

Émile Durkheim
(04/15/1858 – 11/15/1917)
French sociologist (image courtesy of the Bridgeman Art Library)

"A 'fact' merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease."

Bliss Carman
(04/15/1861 – 06/08/1929)
Canadian writer

"When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."

Abraham Lincoln
(02/12/1809 – 04/15/1865)
US President (12) (was married to Mary Todd Lincoln; see all US Presidents)

"One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common—discontent."

Matthew Arnold
(12/24/1822 – 04/15/1888)
English writer

"There's nineteen men livin' in my neighborhood
eighteen of them are fools and the one ain't no doggone good."

Bessie Smith
(04/15/1894 – 09/26/1937)
US singer

"Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

John Singer Sargent
(01/12/1856 – 04/15/1925)
Italian-born US artist

"I've been living more than 150 lives, totally different women."

Claudia Cardinale
(04/15/1938 – )
Italian actor

"Who he kills dies."

Jeffrey Archer
(04/15/1940 – )
English writer, sometime politician , on Saddam Hussein

"There'll always be some arrogant little brat who wants to make music with a guitar. Rock'n'roll will never die."

Dave Edmunds
(04/15/1944 – )
English singer, songwriter (Rockpile)

"Words are loaded pistols."

Jean-Paul Sartre
(06/21/1905 – 04/15/1980)
French existential writer

"So I said to the taxi driver, 'King Arthur's Close.' He said, 'Don't worry, we'll lose him at the next set of lights'"

Tommy Cooper
(03/19/1921 – 04/15/1984)
Welsh comic

"Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent."

Jean Genet
(12/19/1910 – 04/15/1986)
French writer

"Life would be so wonderful if we only knew what to do with it."

Greta Garbo
(09/18/1905 – 04/15/1990)
Swedish actor

"I was bored by a lot of (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein). It hadn't occurred to me that I could skip anything."

Edward Gorey
(02/25/1925 – 04/15/2000)
US artist

"The Ramones own the fountain of youth. Experiencing us is like having the fountain of youth."

Joey Ramone
(05/19/1952 – 04/15/2001)
US musician (Ramones)

"The First Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend."

Byron R. White
(06/08/1917 – 04/15/2002)
US Supreme Court (see other Supreme Court justices) , on PAC spending limits

Yesterday     Tomorrow