May 12

"I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle, so all is peace."

Edward Lear
(05/12/1812 – 01/29/1888)
English painter, writer

"Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better."

Florence Nightingale
(05/12/1820 – 08/13/1910)
English nurse (born in Florence, Italy)

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(05/12/1828 – 04/09/1882)
English artist, poet , brother of Christina

"Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes."

Theodor Reik
(05/12/1888 – 12/31/1969)
US psychoanalyst

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun."

Katharine Hepburn
(05/12/1907 – 06/29/2003)
US actor

"So many women just don't know how great they really are. They come to us all vogue outside and vague on the inside."

Mary Kay Ash
(05/12/1915 – 11/22/2001)
US entrepreneur

"I'm not against the blacks, and a lot of the good blacks will attest to that."

Evan Mecham
(05/12/1924 – 02/21/2008)
US ex-Governor (AZ)

"I don't know if it's good for baseball, but it sure beats the hell out of rooming with Phil Rizzuto!"

Yogi Berra
(05/12/1925 – )
US baseball great , on the marriage of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe

"Miss Streisand looks like a cross between an aardvark and an albino rat surmounted by a platinum-coated horse bun."

John Simon
(05/12/1925 – )
Serbian-US critic

"Happiness, to some elation;
Is to others, mere stagnation."

Amy Lowell
(02/09/1874 – 05/12/1925)
US writer (granddaughter of Abbott Lawrence Lowell)

"I have never fallen in love with my own voice, but I've always had an attraction for it."

Tom Snyder
(05/12/1936 – 07/29/2007)
US TV talk show host

"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect."

George Carlin
(05/12/1937 – 06/22/2008)
US comic

"There's always one person on every gig who does your secret sign to you. They come up afterwards and get hold of you — always here, on the elbow, where it's really secure—and go, 'I know.'"

Ian Dury
(05/12/1942 – 03/27/2000)
English singer

"O, that I were where I would be, Then would I be where I am not; For where I am I would not be, And where I would be I can not."

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
(11/21/1863 – 05/12/1944)
English writer

"Writing is a lonely job, unless you're a drinker, in which case you always have a friend within reach."

Emilio Estevez
(05/12/1961 – )
US actor (son of Martin Sheen (pictured), brother of Charlie Sheen)

"In this life he laughs longest who laughs last."

John Masefield
(06/01/1878 – 05/12/1967)
English writer

"The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity."

Jean Dubuffet
(07/31/1901 – 05/12/1985)
French artist

"People who see a drawing in the "New Yorker" will think automatically that it's funny because it is a cartoon. If they see it in a museum, they think it is artistic; and if they find it in a fortune cookie they think it is a prediction."

Saul Steinberg
(06/15/1914 – 05/12/1999)
Romanian cartoonist

"For the amount of talent I had (and I couldn't dance, act, or tell a joke) I enjoyed a tremendous career."

Perry Como
(05/18/1912 – 05/12/2001)
US singer, actor (died near his birthday)