October 21

"I am, indeed, a king, for I know how to rule myself."

Pietro Aretino
(04/20/1492 – 10/21/1556)
Italian writer

"Poets that lasting marble seek
Must carve in Latin or in Greek."

Edmund Waller
(03/03/1606 – 10/21/1687)
English writer

"Swans sing before they die—'twere no bad thing
should certain persons die before they sing."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(10/21/1772 – 07/25/1834)
English writer

"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. `What! no soap?' So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber."

Samuel Foote
(01/27/1720 – 10/21/1777)
English actor, playwright

"The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs."

Alphonse de Lamartine
(10/21/1790 – 02/28/1869)
French writer

"Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight beyond all others."

Horatio Nelson
(09/29/1758 – 10/21/1805)
English naval commander

"Second to agriculture, humbug is the biggest industry of our age."

Alfred Nobel
(10/21/1833 – 12/10/1896)
Swedish chemist

"I've learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one."

Leo Burnett
(10/21/1891 – 06/07/1971)
US advertising maven

"Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals—the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all."

Martin Gardner
(10/21/1914 – )
US scientist, mathematician, calligrapher