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"Beauty is power; a smile is its sword."
John Ray
(11/29/1627
01/17/1705)
English naturalist
"I would not send a poor girl into the world... ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself."
Anne Brontė
(01/17/1820
05/28/1849)
English writer
(sister of Charlotte
and Emily Brontė)
("The Tenant of Wildfell Hall")
"We love the thing that shocks us and sends chills down our spine." *
Carl Laemmle
(01/17/1867
09/24/1939)
German-born US director
"I am the law!"
Frank Hague
(01/17/1876
01/01/1956)
US mayor (Jersey City, NJ)
"We never make sport of religion, politics, race, or mothers. A mother never gets hit with a custard pie. Mothers-in-lawyes. But mothersnever."
Mack Sennett
(01/17/1880
11/05/1960)
Canadian filmmaker
"I hear it's the Hebrew in Heaven, sir. Spanish is seldom spoken."
Ronald Firbank
(01/17/1886
05/21/1926)
English writer
("Valmouth")
"In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person."
George Bancroft
(10/03/1800
01/17/1891)
US historian, statesman
("History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent")
"In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments."
Rutherford B. Hayes
(10/04/1822
01/17/1893)
US President (19)
"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listensand then everybody disagrees." *
Boris Marshalov
(01/17/1898
10/15/1967)
Russian writer
"I don't even know what street Canada is on."
Al Capone
(01/17/1899
01/25/1947)
US entrepreneur
"This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault."
Robert M. Hutchins
(01/17/1899
05/17/1977)
US educator
("Zuckerkandl!")
"I've always argued that it is just as desirable, just as possible, to have philosopher plumbers as philosopher kings." *
Edith Starrett Green
(01/17/1910
04/21/1987)
US Rep (OR)
"The cat is the only non-gregarious domestic animal. It is retained by its extraordinary adhesion to the comforts of the house in which it is reared."
Sir Francis Galton
(02/16/1822
01/17/1911)
English scientist
("The Art of Travel")
"I'll bet your father spent the first year of your life throwing rocks at the stork."
Irving Brecher
(01/17/1914
11/17/2008)
US screenwriter
("The Wicked Wit of the West: The last great Golden-Age screenwriter shares the hilarity and heartaches of working with Groucho, Garland, Gleason, Burns, Berle, Benny & many more")
"All creatures must learn to coexist. Thats why the brown bear and the field mouse can share their lives in harmony. Or course, they cant mate or the mice would explode."
Betty White
(01/17/1922
)
US actor
"My voice is for hire. My endorsement is not for hire. I will do a voice-over, but I cannot endorse without making a different kind of commitment. My politics are very personal and subjective."
James Earl Jones
(01/17/1931
)
US actor
"The first black president will be a politician who is black."
Lawrence Douglas Wilder
(01/17/1931
)
US governor (VA)
"It just as easily could have gone the other way."
Don Zimmer
(01/17/1931
06/04/2014)
US baseball player
, on the Cubs' 4-4 record
"It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I just beat people up."
Muhammad Ali
(01/17/1942
06/03/2016)
US boxer
"I didn't think it was going anywhere, which just shows you how wrong you can be... At the time, it seemed like the thing to do."
Mick Taylor
(01/17/1948
)
English guitarist
, on quitting the Rolling Stones in 1974
"Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
Steve Earle
(01/17/1955
)
US singer, songwriter
"But I'm not trying to be funny. I just want to play with their heads."
Andy Kaufman
(01/17/1949
05/16/1984)
US comic, actor
"Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves of the things we do like."
Ernest Benn
(06/25/1875
01/17/1954)
English publisher
("Confessions of a Capitalist")
"We worked so hard we almost stopped enjoying it."
Susanna Hoffs
(01/17/1959
)
US musician, songwriter (Bangles)
"I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clock embedded in its flank was 'wonderful.'"
Betty Smith
(12/15/1896
01/17/1972)
US writer
("A Tree Grows in Brooklyn")
"It's an addiction. I love clothes. I like to go down Melrose and look in all the windows and I go to different flea markets. I have lots of costumes. You never know when you're going to have to dress up like a milkmaid from the 1600s."
Zooey Deschanel
(01/17/1980
)
US actor
"I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in 'We, the people.'"
Barbara Jordan
(02/21/1936
01/17/1996)
US Senator and Representative (TX)
"Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?"
Gregory Corso
(03/26/1930
01/17/2001)
US writer
("Marriage")
"I really wanted to be a dancer, but I ended up as an actress and I got to perform next to some of the greatest actors of our time."
Virginia Mayo
(11/30/1920
01/17/2005)
US actor
"People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man does not drive, there is something wrong with him."
Art Buchwald
(10/20/1925
01/17/2007)
US journalist
"I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves."
Bobby Fischer
(03/09/1943
01/17/2008)
US-Icelandic chess grand master
"They glanced at one another like tigers taking measure of a menacing new rival."
Erich Segal
(06/16/1937
01/17/2010)
US writer
("Love Story")
"Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules."
Mary Oliver
(09/10/1935
01/17/2019)
US poet
("Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver")
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