MONTHLY QUOTATIONS
QUOTES FOR NOVEMBER 2023
"But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the wood for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them."
- Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), Canadian author, novelist, poet and diarist
From Anne of Windy Poplars, published in 1936
"It is truer today than when Alfred Nobel realized it a half-century ago, that peace must be paced by human progress. Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life."
- Ralph Bunche (1904-1971), American political scientist, diplomat and civil rights leader
From Nobel Lecture "Some Reflections of Peace in Our Time" on December 11, 1950
QUOTES FOR OCTOBER 2023
- John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist, conservationist and writer
From Leaf and Tendril, published in 1908
What use is it to slumber here,
Though the heart be sad and weary?
What use is it to slumber here,
Though the day rise dark and dreary?
For that mist may break when the sun is high,
And this soul forget its sorrow,
And the rosy ray of the closing day
May promise a brighter morrow.
- Emily Brontë, (1818-1848), English novelist and poet
QUOTES FOR SEPTEMBER 2023
- Alfred Nobel (1833-1896), Swedish chemist, engineer, inventor, businessman, and philanthropist
As quoted in the The 12 best Questions to Ask Customers [2001], by Jim Meisenheimer
As quoted in the The 12 best Questions to Ask Customers [2001], by Jim Meisenheimer
"September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of his brief life. The bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath, and their shrill and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed."
- Rowland E. Robinson (1833-1900), American farmer, artist, and author
From the poem September Days
QUOTES FOR AUGUST 2023
- Attributed to Victoria Erickson, poet, author and creative writing coach, based in Austin, Texas.
"Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics."
- Bernard Baruch (1870-1965), American financier and statesman
From Baruch's Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, June 14, 1946
QUOTES FOR JULY 2023
"And so with the sunshine and the great burst of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), American writer
From The Great Gatsby [1925]
Put on me, but there seems not other way.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far
As I can see no way out but through -
Leastways for me - and then they'll be convinced."
- Robert Frost (1874-1963), American poet
From the poem A Servant to Servants [1914]
QUOTES FOR JUNE 2023
"What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade."
- Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), British horticulturalist, garden designer, artist and writer
From her book Wood and Garden, published in 1899
"True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions."
- Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician
From The Spectator (1711-1714) No. 15 (March 17, 1711)
QUOTES FOR MAY 2023
"In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down."
- Hanuki Murakami (1949-), Japanese novelist and short story writer
From the novel Norwegian Wood, published in 1987
Love and Friendship
Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree -
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom more constantly?
The wild-rose briar is sweet in spring
The summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.
- Emily Brontë, (1818-1848), English novelist and poet
QUOTES FOR APRIL 2023
"No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn. April is a promise that May is bound to keep, and we know it."
- Hal Borland (1900-1978), American author, journalist and naturalist
From "April's End," a New York Times editorial, April 29, 1956
- Attributed to Evan Esar (1899-1995), American humorist
QUOTES FOR MARCH 2023
"In March, the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.
- John Steinbeck (1902-1968), American author
From East of Eden, published in 1952
From East of Eden, published in 1952
"To call women the weaker sex is a libel, it is man's injustice to women. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian lawyer, anti-colonial activist and political ethicist who led a non-violent campaign to achieve Indian independence from British rule.
From Young India, October 4, 1930
QUOTES FOR FEBRUARY 2023
"Because in February the days were really getting longer and you could see it, if you really looked. You could see how at the end of each day the world seemed cracked open and the extra light made its way across the stark trees, and promised. It promised, that light, and what a thing that was."
- Elizabeth Strout (1956-), American novelist and author
From the novel Olive, Again [2019]
"Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each includes the other.
Love is an echo of the feelings of a unity between two persons, which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships."
- Felix Adler (1851-1933), German-American philosopher, professor of political and social ethics
From Life and Destiny [1913]
QUOTES FOR JANUARY 2023
"January was a two-faced month, jangling like a jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define."
- Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995), American novelist and short story writer
From the novel The Price of Salt [1952], later republished as Carol
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough."
- Frank Crane (1861-1928), American writer, Presbyterian minister, speaker and columnist
As quoted in Business Education World [Volume 15, 1935, Page 172]
QUOTES FOR DECEMBER 2022
- Albert Camus (1913-1960), French-Algerian philosopher, author, dramatist. and journalist
From Return to Tipasa [1954]
- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English philosopher and political economist
- From On Liberty [1859]
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American naturalist, essayist, poet and philosopher
QUOTES FOR NOVEMBER 2022
"It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist
From a letter that Einstein wrote to his son Eduard on February 5, 1930. The quote is an English translation because the letter was written in German. The exact quote is "Beim Menschem ist es wie beim Velo. Nur wenn er faehrt, kann er bequem die Balance halten."
"The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July."
Autumn: From the journal of Henry David Thoreau (ed. 1892).
QUOTES FOR OCTOBER 2022
"The time of the falling of leaves has come again. Once more in our morning walk we tread upon carpets of gold and crimson, of brown and bronze, woven by the winds or the rains out of these delicate textures while we slept."
- John Burroughs (1837-1921), American naturalist, conservationist and writer
From Under the Maples, published posthumously by Clara Barrus in 1921
"Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another."
- Kofi Annan (1938-2018), Ghanaian diplomat and seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006
Nobel Lecture, Oslo, Norway (December 10, 2001)